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I 

THE POLAR HUNTERS 


BOOKS BY FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER 

HI. S. Service Series 

Illustrations from Photographs taken for U. S. Government. 
Large i2mo. Cloth. Price, Net $1.35 each. 

THE BOY WITH THE U. S. SURVEY 
THE BOY WITH THE U. S. FORESTERS 
THE BOY WITH THE U. S. CENSUS 
THE BOY WITH THE U. S. FISHERIES 
THE BOY WITH THE U. S. INDIANS 
THE BOY WITH THE U. S. EXPLORE S 
THE BOY WITH THE U. S. LIFE-SAVERS 
THE BOY WITH THE U. S. MAIL 
THE BOY WITH THE U. S. WEATHER MEN 


/iDuseum Series 

Illustrations from Photographs loaned by American Museum 
of Natural History. Large i2mo. Cloth. 

Price, Net $1.35 each. 

THE MONSTER-HUNTERS 
THE POLAR HUNTERS 


LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON 



THE MUSEUM BOOKS 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


BY 


FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER 

A u 

Author of “U. S. Service Series” and “The Monster-Hunters” 


WITH THIRTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS, MOSTLY FROM 
PHOTOGRAPHS LOANED BY THE AMERICAN 
MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY 




✓ 


BOSTON 

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO 


Published, April, 1917 




Copyright, 1917 

By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. 


All rights reserved 
THE POLAR HUNTERS 










IRotwooD Ipress 

BERWICK & SMITH CO 

NORWOOD, MASS. 

y A - 

MAY -2 1917 

©O.A460554 


ACKNOWLEDGMENT 


The Author desires to express his appreciation 
of the courtesy of Professor Henry Fairfield Os- 
born, President of the American Museum of 
Natural History, New York City, and of the con- 
sultation of members of the Scientific Staff of the 
Museum, especially Mr. Geo. M. Sherwood, Cur- 
ator of Public Education and Dr. Clark Wissler, 
Curator of Anthropology. The Author further 
wishes to express appreciation for the use of illus- 
trations provided by the Museum. To Admiral 
Peary thanks are due for the use of an illustration 
and quotations from his hooks, and to Mr. Deltus 
Edwards for material connected with the Franklin 
expedition and other journeys in the great Polar 
quest, as well as to many authors and publishers 
for courtesies extended. 































PEEFACE 


The most stupendous geographical triumph in 
the world has been achieved by an American for 
Americans, and the Stars and Stripes float at the 
North Pole. Marvellous as is this achievement 
in itself, its wonder is even greater when it is real- 
ized that this victory is the result of years of 
patient study as well as of numberless desperate 
struggles and adventures. The secret of the 
Arctic lies hid in the life of the Eskimo, in the 
understanding of whom, American scientists and 
American explorers stand foremost. 

It is a world of evil magic, that world of the 
Frozen North, where the terrible conditions of life 
bring about an unparalleled conflict between Man 
and the Demons of Hunger and of Cold. It is a 
war against Titans, and the Titans have been de- 
feated. Every incident in that grim struggle 
thrills with danger and excitement, every detail of 
life is weird and strange. 

Dwelling in snow igloos on the sea ice ; eating the 
frozen meat that is the staple of the Arctic ; hunt- 


PREFACE 


in g the seal, the walrus, and the polar hear ; fac- 
ing the awful rigors of the Cold and Dark, and 
enduring perils and hardships greater than may 
be found in any other corner of the world,* men 
have faced the Menace of the North and have con- 
quered it. Scores of unburied skeletons lie on 
those unknown shores or beneath the eternal ice 
— heroes, every one. To show to the boys of the 
United States the full glory of their heritage, to 
reveal to them the full measure of the daring of 
the work and the sublimity of the victory, and to 
enflame still further the spirit of brave deeds, is 
the aim and purpose of 


The Author. 



( ’ourtesy of American Museum of Xatural History. 


Two of Kood-shoo’s Chums. 

Tit-a-link, aged 8 years, and Naki-maya-suk, aged 6 years, in summer 
dress. Note the absence of all clothing except for the outer furs. 



























































































CONTENTS 


PAGE 

CHAPTER I 

The Demon Bear 1 

CHAPTER II 

The Two Magics . . 35 

CHAPTER III 

Fighting the Walrus . . . 63 

CHAPTER IV 

The Fire-Stones from the Sky ..... > . 106 

CHAPTER V 


The Coming of the White Men . . r., & g . . 149 

CHAPTER VI 

The Lost Explorers . . . . . v w . v . . 179 

CHAPTER VII 

Near Death on the Great Ice . . . ^ p r . . 224 

CHAPTER Vin 


The Demons Cheated of Their Prey . . . v r. . 258 

CHAPTER IX 

The North Pole v . . 294 

CHAPTER X 

Kood-shoo’s Secret 335 









ILLUSTRATIONS 


Two of Kood-Shoo’s Chums 

Eskimo Camp in Winter 

“Nannook-Soak” — The Polar Bear .... 
Aurora Borealis Seen by MeClintock 
Aurora Borealis Seen by Br. Kane .... 

Waiting for the Seal 

Holding Harpooned Seal 

Fishing Through the Ice 

Pinnacle Berg Frozen Fast in Floe Ice . . . 

Table Berg Frozen Fast in Pack Ice . . . . 

Unconscious of the Hunted Approach . -. . 

Trail of a Shooting-Star > 

Fall of a Meteorite - . . 

Eskimo Spring Hunting Hut .... . . 

Building an Iglooya ....... . , 

Eskimo Bow and Arrow . 

Little Auks on the Open Water ...... 

Eskimo in Kayak Approaching White Man’s Ship 

The Angekok 

A Roll Aurora Borealis . . 


Frontispiece y 

FACING 

PAGE 

. ... 14 
. . . 30 


52 


52 

66 

66 

66 

82 

82 

96 

114 ^ 
114 
138 
138 ^ 
154 
162 

»/ 

170 

188 v'' 
200 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

A Blanket Aurora Borealis 

Marie Ah-ni-ghito Peary in Eskimo Dress . 
The Old Leader of the Musk-Ox Herd . 
Breaking a Puppy to Harness .... 
After a Long Day’s March ..... 
The “Tent” or “Iron Mountain” 
Cross-Section of Meteorite .... . 

Lockwood Starting on His Farthest North . 

Sledging from Fort Conger 

Capt. Sverdrup’s Polar Bear Trap . . . 

The Sledge That Reached the North Pole . 
The Sledge That Reached the South Pole . 

Polar Bear Mother and Cubs 

Eskimo Boy at Play ....... 


FACING 

PAGE 

. 200 * 
. 228 
. 252 
. 256 
. 256 
. 274 ^ 
. 274 ^ 
. 284 
. 284 / 
. 304 
. 332 ^ 
. 332 ^ 
. 346 
. 356 


\ \ 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


CHAPTER I 

THE DEMON BEAR 

“It has come to pass that a man starts on his 
travels ! ’ ’ 

The last words of the Eskimo farewell sounded 

in Kood-shoo’s ears, as the sledges of the two 

walrus-hunters disappeared into the darkness 

over the snow. The Arctic moon, poised near the 

horizon, shone with a blue light over the rough ice 

and threw the lad’s shadow behind him like that 
* 

of a dim giant. He turned to the lean-faced figure 
beside him, dressed in furs. 

“Ky-oah-pah!” cried the boy, “are we going to 
build the iglooya? Just the two of us?” 

“Yes, it must be so,” the old angekok replied. 
“The walrus-hunters will not return until they 
have found meat.” 

“Goody!” said Kood-shoo, his eager eyes and 
his nose alone dimly showing from the furs that 


2 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


covered him from head to foot. IVe always 
wanted to build an iglooya, right out on the winter 
ice.” 

“You have built iglooyas before,” the old man 
said. 

“Play ones! Oh, yes, heaps of times. But 
IVe never built a really truly one, Ky-oah-pah!” 

“Then you shall build one now.” 

Kood-shoo hopped clumsily around in his ex- 
citement, looking like a bear cub on the wind- 
swept ice plain. 

“Where? Where? Where?” he begged. 
“Oh, where are you going to put it, Ky-oah-pah?” 

For answer, the angekok, or medicine man of 
the tribe, looked slowly around him in the cold and 
darkness. Nothing but ice was to be seen, rough 
hummocks of ice, ranging in size from pieces as 
large as a table to masses as huge as a house. 
The moon, which during the long Polar night, 
barely rises above the horizon and only sets below 
it for a few hours, circled the sky in a silver ring, 
making glinting pinnacles of the projections of 
the ice and leaving patches of purple shadow 
everywhere. The eyes of the old Eskimo were 
accustomed to this moonlit darkness and he walked 
on, searching for a place to build the snow house 


THE DEMON BEAR 


3 

that should be their home for two weeks of the 
Polar night. 

“Here!” he said at last, stopping by a small 
mound of snow. “We will build the iglooya 
here.” 

There was a small boss of snow where the 
angekok had stopped. It was not more than a 
hundred yards from the point where the sledges 
had left them. Around was nothing but snow and 
ice and cold. They were out on the frozen sea. 
The wind, blowing over a thousand miles of ice, 
whirled around them. 

From its sheath of seal-skin hide the angekok 
drew his long ivory knife. 

“I will begin,” he said, “and you, Kood-shoo, 
you may bring here the skins and the food. ’ ’ 

“Do let me cut the first block for the iglooya, 
Ky-oah-pah,” pleaded the boy. “Pm sure I can 
do it!” 

The old man smiled at the boy’s enthusiasm, 
but handed him the ivory knife. It was made of 
a narwhal tusk. The tusk of that unicorn of the 
polar seas had been ground down on one side with 
trap-rock from the glaciers, so that it possessed a 
sharp edge ; on the other side, the hard ivory had 
been nicked and notched to form teeth like those 


4 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


of a saw. Of course, the ivory knife was not as 
sharp as steel would have been, but it could cut 
frozen snow better. It could cut the blocks for 
the iglooya as a steel knife could never do, for the 
ivory would not freeze like steel and therefore 
would not stick fast in the snow. 

Kood-shoo took the knife and looked around 
him. An old man, a boy, an ivory knife and snow. 
There were no other workmen, no other tools, and 
no other material. With these, a house was to be 
built. 

“Where’s the best snow, Ky-oah-pah?” ques- 
tioned the boy, all impatience to begin. 

The angekok pointed to a bank that formed a 
slight rise, only a few feet away from the mound 
that he had chosen for the site. 

“There!” he said briefly, and Kood-shoo 
trudged across, the long ivory knife held tightly in 
his fur-mittened hands. 

“How big a piece to start with?” he asked. 

“Half a harpoon’s length,” was the answer. 

Kood-shoo, standing on the frozen snow, thrust 
down the knife as though he were cutting a cake, 
and then, using the saw edge, began to cut through 
the Arm snow. He sawed up and down with all 
his might, completing the cutting of one side of the 


THE DEMON BEAR 


5 

block. Then he stopped, panting, for it was hard 
work. 

“You have begun well, ,, said the angekok, as 
the boy stopped to rest, “I will finish cutting the 
pieces while you bring here the skins. ’ 7 

Kood-shoo nodded and ran off to the little pile 
of household goods that had been left lying on the 
ice when the sledges drove away. It took him 
five trips to bring them all, and by the time that 
he had fetched everything, the angekok had cut 
twenty blocks of snow, each a three-feet cube. 

“Can I put the first door-piece in place V 7 asked 
the lad, for he wanted to have a leading share in 
everything that was done. 

“You may, if you can lift it,” answered the 
angekok, and Kood-shoo stooped down to pick up 
the nearest piece. It was a long stretch for his 
arms, but he managed to get a grip. When he 
tried to lift it, the block would hardly budge. He 
tugged and tugged, but it was of no use. 

“It's a real block,” he said, at last, giving up 
the tussle. “Can you lift it, Ky-oah-pah?” 

The angekok smiled at the question. He was an 
old man, it was true, but he had been a famous 
hunter in his time. Stooping down, he picked up 
the block with ease and laid it on the eastern 


6 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


side of the little circle that he had stamped around 
the mound, the top of which was higher than the 
level of the top of the block. 

6 ‘ How big are you going to make the iglooya?” 
came the boy’s next query. 

“A harpoon’s length and a half,” (eight feet) 
his foster-father answered, stooping down to trim 
the block to its proper shape. One side, the side 
which would be next the opening into the iglooya, 
he left square. The opposite end was shaved off 
diagonally to form a wedge shape inwards. In 
the next piece both sides were cut in a wedge, so 
that the block presented a face three feet in width 
at the outside and a little less than two feet on 
the inside. This wedge shape enabled each block 
to fit to the other at the proper angle in a circle 
and yet to make a wall three feet thick without 
cracks. 

Kood-shoo played a large part here, pushing the 
blocks together as Ky-oah-pah shaped them and 
pressing snow into the little cracks remaining. 
Each block froze as soon as it was pressed into 
place. It was not long until the first tier of blocks 
was set, making a wall three feet high and eight 
feet across the inside, with one opening to the 
east, two and a half feet wide. 


THE DEMON BEAR 


7 

6 ‘Now we ’ll start on the next layer,” said the 
angekok, when the first had frozen hard. 

“I can lift the next-sized blocks, I’m sure,” de- 
clared Kood-shoo. 

In this he was right, for being only about two 
feet high, the slabs were a great deal lighter. 
The boy tugged every one of these blocks to the 
iglooya, and, when Ky-oah-pah had finished cut- 
ting the pieces required — which he did very 
quickly with his long knife — the two lifted them 
together without any trouble. 

“May I smooth the inside?” pleaded the boy. 

The angekok agreed, for he knew that Kood- 
shoo, having built a number of play houses, 
would know just how much of the block should be 
shaved off on the inside so as to round it. And 
as the work had to be done in the semi-darkness, 
it needed trained fingers. By the time Kood-shoo 
had shaped the curve, Ky-oah-pah had almost 
finished cutting the next tier. 

“Isn’t it going up fast?” exclaimed the lad, as 
he stumbled out of the darkness of the rapidly 
rising iglooya to the moonlit snow quarry from 
which the blocks were being taken. 

The angekok nodded. To him the work was 
slow, for he knew that strong men, like Kah-mon- 


8 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


apik and Mirk-tu-shar, the two hunters who had 
gone after walrus, could easily erect an iglooya 
such as they were building in less than an hour. 

“You’re sure it isn’t going to topple in?” asked 
Kood-shoo, with solicitude. He had experienced 
this disaster. More than one of his play houses 
had collapsed when nearly finished. 

“It will not fall,” answered the angekok. He 
had allowed the second tier of blocks to project 
inside only a few inches and they had already 
frozen tight to the blocks below them. Every 
crack was filled up with snow. As before, the 
next tier of blocks were shaped to fit, and Kood- 
shoo went inside to slice the lower edges of them 
into a curve. 

The iglooya was now three tiers high and was 
beginning to draw in towards the top. The fourth 
tier was made of pieces longer and flatter, so that 
more of their weight would rest upon the wall that 
was already built. These were easy to cut and fit, 
and the work went on rapidly. Near the top, the 
angekok ’s skill counted, for herein lay the princi- 
pal difficulty in such building. When only a small 
hole remained to be filled, Ky-oah-pah cut the 
blocks in little pieces of irregular sizes so that 
the hut might end in a flat spiral of small blocks 


THE DEMON BEAR 


9 


and he held each piece in place for a minute or two, 
that it might freeze solidly. The solidity of the 
hut, however, was not dependent on the firmness 
of the frozen block, but on the principle of con- 
struction. The final piece was handed up by 
Kood-shoo. 

“Is this really the last one, Ky-oah-pah?” 
panted the boy, knocking off the icicles which his 
breath had made on the fur beneath his mouth. 
Building the snow hut was hot work, even though 
there were sixty degrees of frost and the wind 
blew silently. 

“The very last,” the angekok replied, with a 
note of relief in his voice. It was several seasons 
since he had built an iglooya, since that work was 
generally done by the hunters. Moreover, he 
knew that there is no worse omen for the success 
of an expedition than the collapse of an iglooya 
during building. 

“Our walls are awfully thick,” announced 
Kood-shoo with pride, as he stood in the opening 
into the hut. “We ought to be warm!” 

“We shall need thick walls,” the angekok re- 
plied. “In two days the moon will be too faint 
for hunting.” 

Kood-shoo knew well what that meant. The 


IO 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


night would grow darker and darker and there 
would follow two long weeks during which no one 
would dare to venture outside. Only the wind 
and the silence would be abroad, under the 
sharp glitter of the stars and the faint waving of 
the Northern Lights. Darkness and desolation 
would reign supreme. Kood-shoo had not seen 
the sun, nor any gleam of daylight, for six weeks. 
He would not see a dawn for two months more. 
The long Polar night held his frozen world in its 
bleak grip. 

Kood-shoo was not afraid of the dark. How 
could he be, when every winter of his life he had 
not seen the sun for four months! But, like every 
Eskimo, he was afraid of the cold, and it was with 
remembrance of that death-menace that ever 
hangs over the North, that he repeated hesitat- 
ingly, 

“You’re sure it will be warm!” 

“Quite sure,” answered Ky-oah-pah, reassur- 
ingly, and Kood-shoo was well content, for he 
knew that Ky-oah-pah, the angekok, was wise with 
all the wisdom of the north. With the long knife, 
holes were made in the snow wall. Through these 
holes loops of rawhide were thrust and a piece 
of ivory passed through the loop on the outside 


THE DEMON BEAR 


1 1 


of the house. Some of the holes were near the 
top, these were to hold the weight of the furs 
which lined the interior of the iglooya ; there was 
a row of holes half-way down, to keep the furs 
close to the wall and holes at the bottom to keep 
the skins out of the way. Not only was this lin- 
ing for warmth, but should there be any dripping, 
it would fall on the suspended hide and not in the 
hut. 

‘ 6 Shall we build the tunnel now?” asked the 
boy, for he realized that no snow house, however 
warmly built and lined, could be habitable unless 
a direct draught of air into the hut was prevented 
by a long curved entrance-way. 

“That will not take long,” the angekok replied. 

The tunnel was simple in construction compared 
with the rest of the iglooya. It was only two and 
a half feet wide, to begin with, so that every block 
laid down rapidly added to its length. 

“You make the breck while I cut the blocks, 
Kood-shoo,” directed the architect. 

“It’ll be pitch-dark in there,” said the boy, “but 
I can get it right, I think, just the same.” 

He dived through the opening into the house 
and began working with a will, digging by feel 
alone. He leveled the mound of the hard snow 


12 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


until the floor of the inside was even with the top 
of the lowest layer of the wall. Thus no cold 
could come through at the bottom. 

As soon as this was done, Kood-shoo dug a hall- 
way on a level with the snow outside. This hall- 
way ran from the center of the iglooya to the 
opening from the hut into the passageway. It 
was just a harpoon’s length, or about five feet. 
Being dug down three feet, it gave the inside of 
the hut the appearance of having a platform of 
snow, three feet high, encircling the narrow pass- 
age. As the iglooya was eight feet in diameter 
on the inside and there was a two and a half foot 
wide passage that ran into the middle, this plat- 
form, or “breck,” as Kood-shoo built it, really 
had three parts. The largest of these was from 
the end of the passage to the furthest wall, and 
therefore was five feet deep, and on either side of 
the passage was a breck nearly three feet deep, to 
the outside wall to right and left. 

By the time that Kood-shoo had finished this 
part of his work, Ky-oah-pah had laid the first 
two tiers of the tunnel, which was .about sixteen 
feet long. Near the iglooya itself, right at the 
opening into the hut, this entrance tunnel was 
built quite high, five feet in height, or almost as 


THE DEMON BEAR 


i3 


high as the iglooya. This part, which was called 
the vestibule, Ky-oah-pah made six feet in length. 
The second part, further from the house and 
nearer to the outside, was only four feet high. It 
was three feet in width, and therefore slightly nar- 
rower than the vestibule portion. It was at this 
point that the curve came, and, counting the curve, 
this section was about eight feet long. Then Ky- 
oah-pah built a solid piece of wall, a little higher 
than the second portion of the tunnel, but allowing 
only a hole two and a half feet high and the same 
wide. This was to serve for a doorway. It 
just gave room for the owners to squeeze through 
on hands and knees. Kood-shoo, who was small, 
could shoot right through it like an arrow from 
a whale-rib bow, but it was a tight fit for Ky-oah- 
pah. 

“Won’t Kah-mon-apik be squeezed getting 
through V* exclaimed Kood-shoo, with a boyish 
grin, as he took note of the small size of the door- 
way. 

Of course there was no door, but the curve of 
the tunnel prevented the icy winds from blowing 
straight into the iglooya. Besides, the tunnel 
pointed to the south-east, and in the Smith Sound 
region, where this snow-house was built, the 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


14 

winter winds are prevailingly from the northwest, 
a fact which Ky-oah-pah did not overlook. 

While the vestibule was building and before the 
smaller tunnel hjad been closed up, all the skins 
and meat had been piled into the hut, and as soon 
as the doorway was made, Kood-shoo and Ky-oah- 
pah went inside to look after the interior furnish- 
ing of the hut which was to be their home for the 
next two weeks on the frozen ocean. 

“ Spread the skins, Kood-shoo,’ ’ said the ange- 
kok, “I will get ready the lamp.” 

Inside the iglooya it was absolutely pitch-dark. 
The boy had to feel for the skins, in order to 
spread them over the breck toward the inside of 
the hut and on the left hand side. The meat was 
stored on the platform to the right. 

Ky-oah-pah had put the lamp near at hand, so 
that he would be able to find it easily. Taking a 
flint and a piece of pyrites, or iron ore, he struck 
them together sharply many times, until at last 
a spark fell into a little bundle of dried moss, 
placed there' for the purpose. 

“Now!” cried Kood-shoo. “You’ve got it this 
time!” 

The boy bent down and softly blew the spark 
into a glow, carefully keeping it alight while Ky- 



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THE DEMON BEAR 


i5 


oah-pah prepared the lamp. This was a simple 
contrivance, consisting merely of a piece of soap- 
stone carved out into the form of a deep saucer, 
with one straight edge. Along this edge the ange- 
kok laid a strip of moss and heaped small pieces 
of blubber into, the middle of the bowl. Then, 
taking the glowing fire that Kood-shoo had kept 
up, he lighted the moss on the edge of the lamp. 
Soon, it also began to glow, and the heat started 
to melt the blubber. As soon as the blubber 
melted and flowed to the bottom of the saucer, the 
moss sucked it up, like, the wick of a lamp. By 
careful management, the glow was coaxed into a 
bright, hot flame, excellent for lighting, heating 
and* cooking, as long as the moss was kept trimmed 
and the center of the lamp was well filled with 
pieces of blubber. 

“Now we ’ll put up the rack,” declared the 
angekok. 

He took the sharpened ends of polar bear ribs, 
which had been lashed together with sinews to 
form, a rack, and thrust them into the snow roof. 
With these as a base, a few twists of the tough 
sinews from a narwhal ’s tail made a strong and 
elastic overhead support. From this the angekok 
suspended the now brightly burning lamp. 


i6 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


“Fill up the water-pot, Kood-shoo,” was the 
next direction, and the boy, taking a larger bowl, 
also made of soapstone, ran down the tunnel and 
wriggled out of the doorway to fill the bowl with 
pieces of ice. The bright light of the iglooya 
made the darkness outside seem all the more dark, 
and the wind was terribly cold. Kood-shoo 
looked up at the moon, which was in her last 
quarter, and felt puzzled, as he often had felt be- 
fore when noticing the phases of the moon. 

“Ky-oah-pah!” he began, as soon as he re- 
turned with the water-bowl, and watched the ange- 
kok hang it over the lamp, where the heat would 
soon melt the ice, “why doesn’t the moon shine 
like a round ball all the timer’ 

“You know the moon is a little girl — ” the ange- 
kok began, but Kood-shoo interrupted him. 

“Oh, I know that story,” he said, “you mean 
about the time that the sun decided to go away 
and leave everybody in darkness, and his little 
girl, the Moon, stole some fire from his lamp and 
ran away to the other side of the sky so that he 
couldn’t catch her?” 

“Yes. Why do you ask, if you know the 
story?” 

“I want to know why the moon changes shape.” 


THE DEMON BEAR 


i7 

“The moon grows tired, she must sleep,” was 
the answer. 

“But when the sun’s here in summer time, he 
doesn’t sleep,” objected Kood-shoo. 

“The Moon is a very little girl,” explained the 
angekok, ‘ 4 the sun is a strong hunter. It is tiring 
for a girl to carry a lamp all round the sky, and it 
is darkness-time now. You know, in darkness- 
time, one sleeps a great deal.” 

“Is the moon such a sleepy-head V 9 

“Yes, worse than you,” declared the angekok 
with a laugh. “When you wake up in the winter 
time, you come wide-awake at once, but the little 
girl moon, when she wakens, yawns so wide that 
you can only see the edge of her face. As she gets 
more and more awake, the yawns grow smaller, 
until, when she is quite wide awake, you can see 
the whole of her face. Then it is hunting time 
and a man goes on his travels.” 

“And the moon yawns just as wide when she is 
going to sleep then, I suppose,” commented Kood- 
shoo. 

“Just as wide. When she begins to grow 
sleepy, she gives a little yawn and then a bigger 
one, and one still bigger, until you can see noth- 
ing of her face but one big yawn. Then she goes 


i8 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


fast asleep, and, of course, her lamp goes out.” 

“I noticed that she was getting sleepy when I 
was out,” the boy remarked, yawning himself as 
he said it. 

“She’s not the only one who’s sleepy,” smiled 
back the angekok. “But we haven’t quite fin- 
ished, Kood-shoo. Come, we must bank up the 
iglooya with snow. It will be warm in here when 
we come back.” 

Although the lamp was burning brightly, and 
the icy chill was slightly lessened, neither Kood- 
shoo nor the angekok had yet taken off their furs 
and the boy dived for the entrance. 

“Why can’t we put water on the hut, just as we 
do in the village?” asked the lad. 

The angekok shook his head at the question. 

“A skin-full of water would freeze solid while 
you were carrying it from the water-hole to the 
iglooya,” he answered. “It is still sunshine-time 
when we bank the iglooya in the village. ’ ’ 

“I’d forgotten that,” admitted Kood-shoo, and 
he joined with a vim in piling the snow around 
and over the new hut, taking especial care to fill 
up all the cracks. 

“Ky-oah-pah,” said the boy, as they worked to- 
gether, “why have we built this iglooya here, 


THE DEMON BEAR 


19 

right on the ice, instead of going back to the vil- 
lage during the time that the moon is asleep ?” 

“If the winter is long,” the old man answered, 
“ there will be very little food in our village of 
Itti-bloo. Kah-mon-apik is the ‘big hunter’ of 
the people. The ice may be good, near the open 
water, and there will be walrus. He must take 
food back with him, or he will no longer be the 
‘big hunter.’ ” 

“But why did you come, Ky-oah-pah, you, 
whose eyes are like an owl’s in daylight?” 

The half -blind angekok leaned forward towards 
the boy . 

“Kah-mon-apik is the ‘big hunter,’ ” he re- 
peated. “He has great courage to fight the wal- 
rus and the big white bear, but his courage is 
small to go to places that are strange and to do 
things which are new. He believes that I know 
the things that are going to happen, and that, with 
me, he will be safe.” 

“But you don’t know what’s going to happen, 
do you?” 

“It is not difficult to know many more things 
than Kah-mon-apik,” was the answer, “or even, 
than Kood-shoo ! True, the people in the village 
say many things about me which they have imag- 


20 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


ined. I have not told them. Only — ” and the an- 
gekok ’s face grew thoughtful, “it is true that 
sometimes strange sights come to me when the 
eyes of my breath are out on the ice, but my body 
is asleep in the iglooya. ’ ’ 

“Every one I’ve met thinks you know a lot,” 
declared the boy. 

“That is why Kah-mon-apik wishes me with 
him.” 

“But why do you take me wherever you go, 
Ky-oah-pah?” questioned the lad, ever hopeful 
of a reply, though he had put the question a score 
of times and the angekok had always answered 
him that he was still too young to know. 

“That your nose may not freeze if you are left 
at home,” was the laughing answer. 

Kood-shoo wriggled uncomfortably. This was 
a very sore point with him, for, among all the 
Eskimo children who lived at Itti-bloo, his nose 
was the only one that froze easily. His foster- 
father, the angekok, had explained to him that this 
was because he was not a member of the far 
northern tribe, but belonged to a different race 
of Eskimos, who lived in Baffin land, on the other 
side of Baffin Bay. So Kood-shoo, being touchy 
on the subject, retorted to Ky-oah-pah, 


THE DEMON BEAR 


21 


‘ ‘ My nose is much more likely to freeze out here 
on the ice than it is in the village ! ’ ’ 

“It will not freeze in the iglooya,” was the an- 
swer, “and you do not travel in the darkness.’ ’ 

“But since I can’t hunt at all, and only do a 
little fishing,” protested Kood-shoo, “why do you 
take me when none of the other hoys go? It’s 
heaps of fun, of course, and I’d hate to he left at 
home, hut it does seem queer. I’ve asked you 
heaps of times, Ky-oah-pah, and you never tell me 
anything ! ’ ’ 

The angekok looked over the dark ice, over the 
world of frozen shadows, gray-hlue and dim, with 
here and there a silver gleam as a piece of ice was 
picked out hy the moonlight. There was no sign 
of the sledges of the walrus-hunters returning to 
the camp. 

“It is too soon for Kah-mon-apik to come 
hack,” he said. “Let us go into the iglooya and 
I will tell you why I brought you out on the ice 
this hunting trip this winter. Perhaps, Kood- 
shoo, you are now old enough to know.” 

He dropped upon hands and feet and crawled 
through the hole at the entrance of the tunnel and 
round the curve into the iglooya. In the vestibule 
he stood, almost erect, and hung up his kapetah, 


22 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


or fox-skin coat, which was covered with snow. 
Kood-shoo followed him and did the same. These 
coats could not be hung in the iglooya, for pres- 
ently the hut would become warm — and the 
warmth would melt the snow upon them and make 
them wet. Once a kapetah was wet, it would take 
a long time to dry. That would never do. One 
could not go outside in a damp kapetah, for it 
would freeze solid like a sheet of bone and the 
wearer would become frost-bitten beneath. The 
kapetahs must always be left hanging in the vesti- 
bule where the snow would not melt on them. 
Then the inside of the fur would always be dry. 
This was the purpose of the vestibule. 

“Doesn’t it smell warm?” exclaimed Kood- 
shoo delightedly, as soon as he climbed on the 
breck. 

It did. To any noses not accustomed to Eskimo 
conditions, it would have smelt a good deal more 
than warm. But the iglooya, as it stood, con- 
tained almost everything which one could need in 
the Polar night : warmth, brightness and a shelter. 
The angekok trimmed the lamp, put in it a few 
more pieces of blubber, lay down on the caribou 
skins and began his story. 

“It was twelve darknesses ago,” he said, 


THE DEMON BEAR 


23 


“ three years after the white men first came and 
spoke to us, that there fell a darkness that was 
very long and very cold. The wind blew all the 
time, so hard and so bitterly that we could not 
even go to the nearest holes cut in the ice for the 
catching of fish. There was very little meat in the 
village, and though all shared their food together, 
there was not enough. Had any one dared to try 
and reach the villages to the north, there was even 
less food there. And, as you know, Kood-shoo, to 
the south lies the Barren Ground, which no Innuit 
can cross, and where no life exists.’ ’ 

Kood-shoo nodded. That stretch of territory 
five hundred miles in length, where the glaciers 
reached to the coast, was familiar as a warning to 
every Eskimo child. 

‘ ‘ Many, many big hunters had piblok-to, during 
that darkness, and it was known as the Piblok-to 
Year.” 

“I’ve heard of that, too,” rejoined Kood-shoo. 
“ Wasn’t that the year that Seeq-wah broke his 
leg by jumping from a big piece of ice, trying to 
fly?” 

6 i That was the year. Seeq-wah thought he was 
a sea-gull,” answered the old man, “ piblok-to 
makes an Innuit believe many strange things.” 


24 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


It was no wonder that Kood-shoo had heard the 
story, for the piblok-to year is famous. Every 
winter, the piblok-to, the brief madness that at- 
tacks the Eskimo, finds some victim, but that year, 
no one had escaped. Some of the women in the 
village had suffered several attacks. Usually, the 
mania only lasts for a few hours, but the year of 
the epidemic, the fits of madness lasted for several 
days, leaving the victim weak and ill. 

4 4 When we were getting ready for the spring 
hunting after the Piblok-to Darkness,’ ’ the ange- 
kok continued, 4 4 one of the hunters, looking across 
that piece of open sea which the white men call 
the North Water, cried out that there was a man 
drifting by on the ice and that he was being eaten 
by a polar bear.” 

4 4 Were they fighting hard!” questioned Kood- 
shoo, his eyes sparkling with anticipation. 

4 4 You shall see,” the angekok replied. 4 4 The 
hunters put off in their kayaks,” he continued, 
4 4 each one taking his spear and his harpoon, to go 
to the rescue of this drifting stranger from an 
unknown land. But, as the hunters drew nearer, 
they saw a sight so strange that fear filled their 
stomachs, and all the kayaks, except one, were 
turned for the shore and driven toward the village 


THE DEMON BEAR 


25 

as fast as the paddles could be made to dip the 
water. ’ ’ 

“The one that didn’t turn back, I suppose, was 
yours?” put in the boy. 

Ky-oah-pah nodded. 

“I was just as much afraid,” he answered, “but 
I am angekok, and the things that are strange I 
must dare to see. 

“On a large cake of ice, that was drifting fast 
down the North Water, stood a tall hunter. He 
was dressed as a hunter, though with a kapetah 
fashioned differently from that of our folk, but he 
wore, besides, a woman’s amaut, and from this 
hood there peered a baby, a boy about three years 
old. And, Kood-shoo,” the angekok paused sol- 
emnly, “on the same piece of ice there was a 
nannook-soak, a lean and hungry polar bear.” 

“Were they fighting?” asked the lad excitedly, 
for above all Ky-oah-pah ’s stories, he liked best 
those which told of polar bear fights. 

“No,” answered the angekok mysteriously, 
“they were not fighting. The hunter was stand- 
ing beside the polar bear, with his hand on the 
nannook-soak ’s neck, as though it were a sledge- 
dog.” 

“And the nannook didn’t eat him up?” 


26 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


“The nannook, with his little eyes, his red 
tongue and his sharp white teeth, stood beside the 
hunter, swaying his long fierce head from side to 
side, yet never offering to touch either the hunter 
or the baby.” 

“What did you think, Ky-oah-pah ? ’ ’ 

“I was afraid,” the angekok replied, “just as 
the others were. But I could not show it. 

“The stranger called to me as I stopped my 
kayak near the piece of ice. 

“ ‘You are the brave one/ he said, ‘all the other 
hunters have run away . 9 

“ ‘They think Torn-uk-soak is. in the nannook/ 
I answered, because, Kood-shoo, it looked as 
though there must be a demon somewhere, either 
in the bear or in the hunter. ’ ’ 

“It might have been in the boy,” put in Kood- 
shoo, mischievously. 

“Perhaps, in the boy,” gravely agreed the 
angekok. 

“Then, what happened?” eagerly asked Kood- 
shoo, for the story was quite new to him and the 
angekok was telling it so seriously. 

“The stranger answered me, 

“‘Only the weak man fears Torn-uk-soak. 
Come closer with your kayak. ’ 


THE DEMON BEAR 


27 


“I was very much afraid, Kood-shoo, but I 
knew that if it were Torn-uk-soak, it would do no 
good to paddle away. Can one escape a demon? 
So I came closer. 

“ t Throw me your harpoon-line,’ then said the 
fierce-eyed hunter. His language was not quite 
the same as ours, but I could understand what he 
said. 

“I threw the harpoon upon the floating piece of 
ice. The hunter took the end of the line in his 
hand. 

‘ ‘ ‘ Paddle to the shore, ’ he said. 

“Then I was more afraid. Here I was bring- 
ing Torn-uk-soak to the village, in the form either 
of a stranger or a bear. ’ ’ 

“Or a boy,” put in Kood-shoo. 

“Or a boy,” assented the angekok solemnly. 
“But in whatever form he came, who could tell 
what harm might follow? Yet, if it were indeed 
Torn-uk-soak, it was better to please him than to 
anger him. So I took my paddle and struck out 
for the shore. It was not long before the piece 
of ice grounded. 

“Then, Kood-shoo, there happened that which 
made me yet more afraid. The fierce-eyed hunter 
took the little boy from his amaut and placed him 


28 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


on the nannook’s back, as the people of the other 
side of the moon (the Siberian natives) sit on the 
backs of caribou (reindeer).” 

“Was the boy afraid?” asked Kood-shoo. 

“He was too small to be afraid. He laughed 
and held tight to the loose skin around the nan- 
nook’s neck. 

“Then the hunter leaped from his piece of ice 
to another that was near by, and so from piece 
to piece, until he reached the shore. ’ 9 

“Leaving the boy alone with the nannook?” 
cried Kood-shoo, in surprise. 

“Leaving the boy astride the nannook’s back,” 
was the reply. ‘ ‘ Then the great bear slowly 
plunged into the water, swimming high. So high 
did he swim that only the feet of the boy were 
in the water. The long legs and hair-covered 
paws of the giant bear beat the water like the pad- 
dles of a mighty kayak, and the boy rode on the 
nannook-soak as Torn-uk-soak rides on the wind. 

“And so they came to shore, the hunter first, 
and then the nannook with the boy. The bear 
climbed on the shore ice and came close to the 
hunter, where he stood waiting. To the boy on 
his back he gave no heed. 

“As soon as I had unfastened myself from my 


THE DEMON BEAR 


29 


kayak, and drawn it np on the beach, for the ice 
was running heavily, I joined the stranger, stand- 
ing beside him, however, on the opposite side from 
the bear. I had nothing with me but a small seal 
harpoon, useless against the nannook-soak, who 
was two arm-stretches long (nine feet) and heav- 
ier than six men (1000 lbs.). 

“The stranger looked at me. 

“ ‘Even you are afraid!’ he said. ‘Are the 
hunters of your tribe afraid of a nannook?’ 

“ ‘They are afraid of Torn-uk-soak, even as I 
am,’ I answered him. ‘It is not good to be so 
close to demons. Even the dogs are barking.’ 

“ ‘Your dogs are loud in welcome,’ he said. 

“I called to the people of the village. 

“ ‘ Do not set loose the dogs!’ I cried.” 

“Why did you tell them that, Ky-oah-pah?” 
queried Kood-shoo. 

“Dogs would not understand,” the angekok re- 
plied. “They would have seen the nannook and 
the nannook only. They would not have seen 
Torn-uk-soak. As I have said, it is not wise to 
make the demons angry.” And he continued, 

“The nannook swung its long fierce head from 
side to side and began to walk slowly to the vil- 
lage. I have seen sights of fear in my long life, 


30 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


Kood-shoo, but never anything which made me 
so afraid as that slow onward walk of the nan- 
nook-soak, with the baby on its back, while the 
fierce-eyed stranger watched them from the shore. 

“Kah-mon-apik, he was a young man then, 
stepped out from his stone igloo, with two sharp 
bone-barbed spears in his hand. 

“ ‘Be still, Kah-mon-apik,’ I shouted. i It is 
not wise to make Torn-uk-soak angry. Keep a 
fast hold upon your spears, but do not use them!’ 

‘ 6 Kah-mon-apik stood motionless, ready, watch- 
ing the nannook-soak come near. 

“At all the windows of the stone igloos, faces 
could be seen pressing against the bladder-skin 
panes, but no one else dared venture forth. Only 
Kah-mon-apik, standing there with his spears, and 
I, standing beside the stranger with my seal- 
harpoon, were face to face with the danger. 

“The dogs were howling furiously, the best 
ones straining at their leashes, eager to attack the 
bear. But the nannook took no notice of their 
howls. Steadily he walked on, the boy still on his 
back. As though Torn-uk-soak indeed were guid- 
ing him, he walked straight to my igloo . 9 ’ 

“Weren’t you afraid for little In-nook-shee- 
ah?” urged Kood-shoo, thinking of his playmate, 




Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History. 

“ NANNOOK-SOAK ” — THE POLAR BEAR. 


On such a hear as this (which is one of the exhibits in the Polar Bear 
group in the Museum) Kood-shoo came to Itti-bloo. 









THE DEMON BEAR 


3i 

the angekok’s daughter, “she was only a baby, 
then. ’ 9 

“I knew that her mother would keep her in the 
igloo,” answered the narrator, “and no nannook, 
even with Tom-uk-soak in his stomach, could make 
himself small enough to go in at the door. No 
igloo could have held that nannook. He was too 
big. Right at the door he stopped. 

4 ‘ The nannook looked back at the boy, as though 
noticing him for the first time, and gave his shoul- 
ders a great heave. The boy came tumbling, all 
of a heap, right beneath the gleaming claws of 
the great bear. The nannook looked at him again 
and took no further heed. His small eyes peered 
about the village and then he turned and looked 
out to sea. 

“The howling of one of the dogs broke into a 
vicious snarl and the greatest fighter of the pack, 
a huge brute, who had bitten through his raw- 
hide thongs in his impatience, came leaping for 
the bear. The nannook-soak turned his fierce 
head to his attacker, and, rising on his haunches, 
struck at his assailant as he leaped and felled him 
with his paw. The blow would have crushed a 
walrus skull, and the dog, although the strongest 
in the village, was killed as a man kills a fly. 


32 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


“Kah-mon-apik, to whom the dog belonged, 
again raised his spear. And again I shouted, 

“ ‘Be still, Kah-mon-apik, no hunter can kill 
Torn-uk-soak!’ 

“So the hunter dropped the point of his spear. 

“The nannook turned from the body of the dog 
and slowly, as before, walked past the igloos. 

‘ ‘ The stranger turned to me. 

“ ‘It has come to pass that a man starts on his 
travels,’ he said. ‘We have far to go,’ and I shiv- 
ered at the ‘we.’ ‘And, on this journey that we 
go to the nannook ’s home, there is no meat. The 
child needs food and must stay here. Whose is 
the igloo?’ 

“ ‘It is mine,’ I said. 

“ ‘It is the igloo of a brave man,’ he answered. 
‘You will be father to the child. He will be a 
hunter, some day, a greater hunter than your tribe 
has known, and he, too, will hunt in the home of 
the nannook-soak, in the land where there is no 
meat. ’ 

“ ‘It is not for evil to the people of Itti-bloo 
that Torn-uk-soak has come?’ I ventured to ask. 

“ ‘Evil comes only when a hunter brings it in 
his stomach,’ was the reply. ‘We have come for 
good. We come to bring magics to Itti-bloo. 


THE DEMON BEAR 


33 


Around the boy’s neck is an amulet. In it are the 
two magics. The square one he must sell to the 
white men and they will come here often and give 
you so much food that never again will the village 
be hungry. I, the black hunter from the Kig-ik- 
tag-miut (one of the Baffin Land tribes) have said 
it. The round magic you must never sell. The 
boy must keep it.’ 

“He stopped and watched the nannook. 

“ ‘It has come to pass,’ he repeated, 4 that a man 
goes on his travels.’ 

“ ‘You will feast first,’ I suggested, for it is not 
good to let the demons go unfed. 

“The hunter from the Kig-ik-tag-miut answered 
me over his shoulder. 

“ ‘When we are hungry,’ was his strange reply, 
‘the nannook will find meat.’ 

“I saw his famine-lined face no more. As 
slowly as the nannook, and as strangely, he walked 
to the end of the village, where the igloos come 
almost to the sea. So they walked together, the 
great bear past the doorways of the igloos, the 
hunter along the shore, and they met at the village 
end. 

“The hunter laid his hand upon the nannook ’s 
neck, and, big man though he was, the bear came 


34 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


almost to his armpits. Walking side by side, they 
passed out of the village, out to the slopes of the 
mountains and the Sermik-soak (ice-cap) beyond. 

. ‘ ‘For hours we could see them, climbing the 
glacier side by side, up to that land of silence 
where nothing lives, a land where there is no meat. 
Always they were side by side, the hand of the 
hunter upon the great bear’s neck, until they were 
lost in the haze of the mountains. 

“Wondering greatly, I followed them. But 
when I came to a bank of smooth snow and found 
on it neither track of nannook nor footprint of 
hunter, I knew it was not wise for me to go 
further. 

“I turned back again to my igloo, and there I 
saw the boy, still playing on the moss before my 
doorway. 

‘ ‘ That boy, Kood-shoo, was you ! ’ ’ 


CHAPTER II 


THE TWO MAGICS 

Upon the heap of deerskins at the end of the 
snow hnt, Kood-shoo started bolt upright, his 
eyes almost popping out of his head. 

“You mean that I was the boy who rode into 
the village, sitting on the nannook-soak ! Oh, Ky- 
oah-pah, really V 9 

The old man shook his head from side to side, 
the Eskimo sign of assent. 

“It happened as I have told it,” he answered. 
“You are the boy. And that is why I always take 
you with me, when I go upon the ice . 9 9 

“But I don’t see why, even yet,” declared 
Kood-shoo. “What has my riding on the nan- 
nook got to do' with my going with you on the 
winter hunts!” 

“It is because you were riding on Torn-uk- 
soak,” the angekok explained. “If you are so 
great a friend of the demon, who has power over 
cold and storm, he will not let you freeze or drown. 
Did not the fierce-eyed stranger say that you 
35 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


36 

would grow to be a great hunter, that some day 
would climb upon the sermik-soak of the moun- 
tains (the Greenland ice-cap), that land of silence, 
where there is no meat? It is sure, then, that 
until that time arrives, in every danger you will be 
safe. The demons do not lie. Those, then, who 
travel with you will be safe as well. ,, 

The Eskimo boy looked pleased, but he looked 
grave, too. It was something to be told that he 
first was seen riding on the back of a huge polar 
bear, but it was also disturbing to him to learn 
that his friends took him with them on their 
travels because he was supposed to be in league 
with the demons. Kood-shoo was not quite sure 
he liked the idea. 

“But you don’t really believe it all, Ky-oah- 
pah?” protested the boy. “Isn’t it just a tale 
you ’re telling me!” 

“I was there and saw it,” answered the ange- 
kok, betraying no surprise at the boy ’s incredulity, 
though no other child in the tribe would have 
questioned his word. Ky-oah-pah was accus- 
tomed to Kood-shoo ’s differences from the other 
children in the village, but he believed that this 
was due to the fact that Kood-shoo came from an- 
other tribe. 


THE TWO MAGICS 


37 


“If it’s all true, then, Ky-oah-pah, where are 
the magics! Can I see them! Have you got 
them here ! ’ 9 

For answer, the angekok put his hand inside his 
bird-skin shirt and pulled out a caribou-skin 
pouch. From this he drew a small, square, red 
object and laid it in Kood-shoo ’s hand. 

“What is it, Ky-oah-pah!” 

“A white man’s picture book,” was the reply. 

Eager to see what stories the white men had 
told, Kood-shoo opened the book. He could not 
understand a single thing. 

“You said that it was pictures!” he cried, dis- 
appointedly. 

“White men’s pictures,” the angekok corrected 
him. 

In the Eskimo sense he was correct, for all 
Eskimo writing is in pictures and many a story 
had Kood-shoo been able to read from the figures 
carved on walrus tusk or narwhal horn which the 
angekok kept in his stone igloo at their own vil- 
lage of Itti-bloo. There were no such pictures in 
the white men’s book, only some queer black 
scratch marks on the leaves within. 

“I don’t understand anything about it,” the boy 
said, sadly, handing the book back to the angekok. 


38 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

“Why should you understand ?” his friend re- 
joined. “It is white men’s magic.” 

“But I thought, Ky-oah-pah, you said that the 
stranger told you to sell it to the white men. 
Why did you keep it when the white men came last 
year?” 

“It is for you to sell, not for me,” the angekok 
explained. “I am quite sure that Tom-uk-soak 
would not be pleased if I had sold the magic to 
the white men and never given it to you. It is 
yours, not mine. Now that you are old enough to 
know about these things, Kood-shoo, you must 
take charge of these magics and you must show 
this one to the white men when next they come. 
They may visit Itti-bloo next summer.” 

“And I’m to sell this to them?” 

“So the Kig-ik-tag-miut hunter said. They 
may give you something of value in return for the 
magic, perhaps, even a knife like that of Kah-mon- 
apik, and, as well, so much food that never again 
will the village be hungry.” 

“All because of me!” exclaimed the lad, de- 
lightedly. 

“No, not quite,” the angekok replied, “the 
white men help the Innuit because the white men 
are good and very rich. But because of your 


THE TWO MAGICS 


39 

magic we may get a closer friendship with the 
white men.” 

“ Where is the other magic, then, Ky-oah-pah,” 
urged the boy, “the one that I mustn’t sell?” 

“It is here also,” answered the old man. 

He drew from the same caribou-skin pouch a 
round yellow object, covered with a shiny trans- 
parent substance which was really glass, but which 
Kood-shoo supposed to be the membrane from the 
insides of a seal, such as was used for windows 
in the village igloos. Inside this flat, yellow, cir- 
cular box, balanced so that it moved around, was 
a needle. 

“What a funny needle,” cried the boy, 
“where’s the hole for the sinew thread?” 

“It has none,” rejoined the angekok. 

Kood-shoo turned it over, sideways, upside 
down, tried to take it apart, but nothing happened. 

“I don’t understand this, either,” he announced, 
greatly disappointed that both the “magics” 
should prove so incomprehensible. “A needle 
isn’t for a hunter, that’s a girl’s gift!” 

Ky-oah-pah nodded negatively. 

“No,” he answered, “it is not a girl’s gift. I 
saw something like this, once, when I was on the 
white men’s ship. Only this is a baby one. Per- 


40 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


haps — ” he looked at the object suspiciously, 
“ perhaps it will get bigger as you grow bigger. 
I do not know. White men’s magic is not for an 
Innuit to understand.” 

“But I want to understand,” declared Kood- 
shoo. “I’ll ask the white men when they come.” 

The angekok’s one eye gleamed curiously at 
Kood-shoo. The boy’s desire to find out every- 
thing, so different from his playmates, always 
amazed the angekok. He placed the two “mag- 
ics” back in the caribou-skin pouch and handed 
it to Kood-shoo. 

“You wear this now,” he said. “You are a 
child no more. ’ ’ 

He turned away and busied himself trimming 
the lamp and putting in it some more pieces of 
blubber. 

Kood-shoo was hungry and as there is neither 
breakfast-time nor dinner-time in Eskimo-land, 
the boy took a chunk of frozen walrus flipper and 
commenced munching contentedly. In order to 
eat the flipper, the lad had to hold a piece in his 
mouth until it was sufficiently thawed to be cut off 
with a knife. After a piece of proper size was 
thus secured, each half-thawed piece had to be 


THE TWO MAGICS 


4i 

held in the mouth until it was soft enough for 
chewing. 

This was a fair sample of Kood-shoo’s meals, 
for in all his life, he had never seen bread, vege- 
tables or fruit. During the short Arctic summer 
he had eaten the wild crow-berries that grow 
among the moss, but aside from that, summer and 
winter, his food had never been anything but meat 
and blubber. Kood-shoo was happily munching 
the raw walrus flipper, when from the darkness 
outside came the Eskimo greeting, 

“Huk! Huk! Huk!” 

“It's Kah-mon-apik and Mirk-tu-shar ! ’ ’ cried 
the boy, jumping off the breck. “I’m going to see 
what meat they’ve brought !” 

He snatched his mittens from the overhead 
rack, where they had been drying, put on his kape- 
tah, which had Veen hanging in the vestibule, and 
wriggled out of the doorway like a little eel. 

“It’s an o A 6g-sook ! ” he cried in delight, as soon 
as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness. 
6 6 Oh, wha t a big one, Kah-mon-apik ! I never saw 
a bearded sealas big as that. It’s like a walrus.’ ’ 

“It is mine/’ the hunter declared proudly, “I 
killed hi n wdh one harpoon stroke.” 


42 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


* i Goody !” cried Kood-shoo, “now we’ll have 
lots to eat when the moon’s asleep.” 

“But not the oog-sook,” put in Mirk-tu-shar. 
“We will take the oog-sook to the village. I have 
killed five little seals and Kah-mon-apik has har- 
pooned seven. You will catch fish, perhaps, and 
there will be plenty of meat until next hunting. 
Then we will get a walrus, or perhaps, even, a 
nannook ! ’ ’ 

Kood-shoo ran to Mirk-tu-shar ’s sledge to look 
at the rest of the kill, and back again. 

“I see you have finished the iglooya,” said Kah- 
mon-apik. 

‘ 4 Isn ’t it a fine one ! ’ ’ exclaimed Kood-shoo. ‘ ‘ I 
did a lot of it ! ” 

“Then it will be lucky,” declared the hunter. 
“Unharness the dogs, Kood-shoo.” 

In spite of the cold, which seemed so much more 
terrible in the increasing darkness as snow began 
to fall, Kood-shoo helped to unharness the dogs. 
They yelped and howled, jumping and snapping at 
each other, as fresh as though they had not pulled 
two loaded sledges through the darkness over sev- 
eral miles of rough ice. There are few things 
harder to handle than a dog-team, foi the animals 
insist on jumping over and around ?ach other, 


THE TWO MAGICS 


43 


tangling their long and loose rawhide traces into 
impossible knots. But Kood-shoo had the trick 
of handling them. Soon the dogs were freed 
from the loads and tethered to a stake driven into 
the hard snow. The boy stopped long enough to 
give a special hug to Paudiak “the good,” so 
called because he was the most vicious dog in Itti- 
bloo. 

“Take care, Kood-shoo,” warned Mirk-tu-shar, 
“Paudiak is savage to-day!” 

Kood-shoo laughed and paid no heed. He knew 
that the dog was devoted to him, and hugged him 
the second time. 

“It is like the day he rode in on Torn-uk- 
soak,” said Mirk-tu-shar in a low voice to Kah- 
mon-apik, as he watched the boy playing with the 
shaggy brute. 

The hunter nodded. 

“We will leave food for Torn-uk-soak to-day,” 
he replied gravely, referring to the Eskimo cus- 
tom of putting out food for the demons to eat, 
when the weather threatens to be stormy. 

Kood-shoo was sleepy, for he had eaten a lot 
of the walrus flipper and had worked hard at build- 
ing the iglooya, but he knew it was wise to wait 
and help the hunters all that he could. Perhaps 


44 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


he might be given a drink of the warm seal blood ! 
That would be a great treat, for in Eskimo-land 
there is little to drink but blubber-oil and the 
water from melted ice. 

‘‘Are you going to flense (skin and cut up) the 
seals now, Kah-mon-apik V 9 he asked. 

“Now!” answered the hunter. 

He drew from its walrus-hide sheath the long 
steel knife — the only one in the possession of the 
tribe — which had been given him by the white men. 
Kah-mon-apik was very proud of this gift from 
the qavdlunat and he kept it very sharp by grind- 
ing it on a piece of trap-rock from the glacier. 

Into the hide of the oog-sook the keen knife 
slipped, cutting easily the skin that would have 
taken half-an-hour ’s labor with Ky-oah-pah ’s 
ivory blade. 

“It cuts like a sledge-track in the soft snow,” 
declared Mirk-tu-shar, who was never weary of 
watching the wonderful knife. 

As soon as the hide was stripped off, the blanket 
of blubber or fat, three inches thick, was carefully 
removed in long straight strips. 

“I’ll carry those in!” cried Kood-shoo. 

Taking the pieces of blubber in his arms, he 


THE TWO MAGICS 


45 


crept through the door into the iglooya. The 
strips were all greasy and bloody, of course, but 
that mattered little to Kood-shoo, for he had never 
had a bath in all his life and his clothes had never 
been washed. A little more grease and another 
coating of blood would not make any special dif- 
ference. 

With the white men’s knife in the skillful hands 
of Kah-mon-apik, it was not long until the blubber 
was removed. The waning moon was now ob- 
scured by the fast-falling snow, but the hunter’s 
skill was so great that he could have performed 
the task blind-folded. Then, when the blubber 
had all been cut away, the knife was sunk deep in 
the flesh, in such a way that the blood would run 
into the inside of the seal, and Kood-shoo, who 
was a favorite with the hunter, was given the first 
taste. 

“I wish I were big enough to have a piece of 
the oog-sook’s heart, Kah-mon-apik,” the boy said 
longingly. “I’m sure it would make me a hunter 
much more quickly.” 

Kah-mon-apik looked up in horror at the sug- 
gestion. 

“You must not. You must never not,” he re- 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


46 

peated, doubling the negative for greater earnest- 
ness, “Not until you have killed an oog-sook by 
yourself can you eat the heart, the liver, or the in- 
testines of the big bull bearded seal.” 

“I know it,” said Kood-shoo, for he was well 
aware of the Eskimo custom that young children 
and women must not eat the insides of animals, 
nor eggs, nor even small creatures such as hares 
and ptarmigans. “I know I can’t eat it now, but 
Pm going to kill one soon, and then I will!” 

“That will come,” answered Kah-mon-apik, 
“but you must wait a few more darknesses yet.” 

Soon all the meat was cut from the bodies of the 
oog-sook and the smaller seals, and carried into 
the iglooya. A chunk of meat was thrown to each 
of the sixteen dogs, of which there were eight to 
each team, and the tough brutes, after gulping the 
meat down in large mouthfuls, lay down on the 
snow and went to sleep. 

“Will you let them in if it gets very cold, Kah- 
mon-apik?” asked Kood-shoo, for he knew that 
sometimes, in the most piercing weather, some 
hunters allowed their dogs to come into the pas- 
sageway of the iglooya. 

Kah-mon-apik nodded his head negatively. 

“They are all strong dogs,” he said; “they will 


THE TWO MAGICS 


47 

stay tougher in the snow. An iglooya-housed dog 
grows tender on the trail.” 

Those dogs of Kah-mon-apik’s team were strong 
and hardy animals. No matter what the weather, 
they lay down on the ice to sleep. If a storm came 
up and covered them with snow, they slept the 
warmer for that snow-blanket. They only rose 
when the snow above them grew too heavy, to 
shake themselves free of the coating of flakes, to 
turn round three times and lie down again to sleep, 
their noses curled up in their fur. 

With the seals cut up and the dogs fed, and with 
some pieces of meat laid out on the ice for Torn- 
uk-soak, the work of the hunting trip was over. 
Kah-mon-apik and Mirk-tu-shar followed Kood- 
shoo into the iglooya. The hunters were hungry, 
far too hungry to talk. Each hung up his kapetah 
in the vestibule, put his seal-skin mittens on the 
rack and climbed up on the breck, where he ate 
piece after piece of fresh raw seal meat until he 
could hold no more. 

The hut was warming up gradually, but it was 
not warm enough yet to undress. Kah-mon-apik 
pulled the deerskins over his bearskin trousers 
and birdskin shirt and went quickly to sleep. Ky- 
oah-pah, Mirk-tu-shar and Kood-shoo followed his 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


48 

example, and in less than half an hour after the 
sledges had driven np with the oog-sook, the entire 
camp was fast asleep. 

The iglooya was warming up, now. With the 
constant burning of the blubber-fed lamp and the 
breathing of the four people, the snow hut grew 
steadily closer, until it was as warm inside as the 
temperature of a sunny summer day. The frozen 
walrus flipper began to thaw, and, together with 
the fresh seal meat, oozed out blood, which 
dripped, drop by drop, from the breck, to make a 
little pool on the floor of the passage, where it 
froze hard at once. 

The cold penetrated the snow walls sufficiently 
to keep them from thawing on the inside, for if the 
walls should thaw and melt, even a little, it would 
make the whole of the iglooya damp and no one 
could live in it. It is only possible to endure the 
cold, in Eskimo-land, when everything is dry. 
Simple though their heating system may be, the 
Eskimos are very wise, for they know exactly the 
size of lamp which will give heat enough for an 
iglooya, and yet not make it so hot that the walls 
will melt. So, while the moon grew smaller and 
smaller, while the darkness became more and more 
black, while the wind blew colder and colder and 


THE TWO MAGICS 


49 


the snow fell steadily, Kood-shoo, the angekok and 
the hunters lay warm and comfortable, fast asleep 
in their iglooya out on the Polar ice. 

Thirty hours passed before Kood-shoo woke up. 
There was no morning light to act as an alarm 
clock; it was as dark, or even darker, than when 
he went to sleep. During all that long time the 
moon had only set for a few hours. She had trav- 
eled round the horizon in a broken ring, being only 
a little higher in the southern half of the sky than 
in the northern. 

Ky-oah-pah was already awake. Being an old 
man, he did not need as much sleep. Indeed, he 
had awakened two or three times, while Kood-shoo 
had not stirred, and each time that he woke he had 
trimmed the lamp and put some pieces of blubber 
in the center. He could do this without getting 
out from his caribou skin blankets, for, like all the 
rest, he slept with his head towards the lamp. 

The two tired hunters, Kah-mon-apik and Mirk- 
tu-shar, slept on. They did not wake till many 
hours later. In Eskimo-land, people sleep long in 
the winter time, making up for the activities of 
the summer, when hardly any one sleeps at all. 

With fresh seal meat at hand, Kood-shoo did 
not need to be hungry. 


50 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

“Ky-oah-pah,” lie called, “will you cut me a 
bit?” 

It was warm, cuddling under the caribou skins 
and the boy felt too lazy to move. 

The angekok sawed off a chunk of the meat with 
his ivory knife and handed it to him. Kood- 
shoo took it contentedly and began chewing the 
rich, spongy red meat. That was his breakfast, 
and just as soon as he had chewed it all up and 
felt that he could hold no more, he fell asleep 
again. But he slept only for a little while, for he 
had almost had his sleep out, and when next he 
turned over and opened his eyes, he was wide 
awake and ready to join in whatever was going on. 

“Making soup, Ky-oah-pah?” he queried, as he 
saw the angekok busy over the lamp. 

The old Eskimo nodded. 

“The nice one?” eagerly asked the boy. 

“The soup you like so much,” the angekok re- 
plied. 

“Goody,” declared the boy. “When will it be 
ready?” 

“In a little while,” came the assurance. 

Kood-shoo jumped off the breck. 

“I’m going out to see the dogs,” he announced. 

He reached down the mittens from the rack, put 


THE TWO MAGICS 


5i 


on his kapetah, fastened the hood close aronnd his 
face and crawled out of the door. The wind was 
blowing so hard that to walk against it was like 
trying to push back a heavy stone. Although so 
little* of Kood-shoo ’s face was exposed that the 
rim of bushy foxtails which encircled it tickled his 
nose on both sides, the fur was small protection 
against the cold. Remembering that his nose 
froze easily, the boy rubbed it frequently. 

Not a dog was to be seen. 

Kood-shoo called: 

“Paudiak!” 

There was a stir under one of the many little 
snow heaps around him and Paudiak jumped up, 
shaking the snow from his back. He put his paws 
on the lad’s shoulders and tried to lick his face. 
Kood-shoo fell under the dog’s weight and went 
sprawling on the snow. Paudiak thought this was 
a game and yelped with delight. Generally Kood- 
shoo would have enjoyed a romp in the snow, but 
he had not bargained for the wind on the polar 
ice. It was very different here from the sheltered 
nook on Okrik’s Bay where the village of Itti-bloo 
was built. 

Up in the north, curtains of shining silver, 
tipped with red and green, flickered and waved. 


52 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


Shafts of red light, like long knife blades, shot 
from out these curtains and then wavered and 
trembled like a lamp-flame in the open air. Many 
and many a time had Kood-shoo seen the Aurora 
Borealis, but, unlike the other Eskimos, he ever 
enjoyed watching it. It always seemed new and 
wonderful. It always was different. Paudiak 
did not watch it. He turned round three times 
and lay down again in the hollow his body had 
made and the snow commenced to weave a new 
blanket to cover him. 

Then, suddenly, a quick twinge in his nose, fol- 
lowed by a feeling as though it were swelling, 
warned Kood-shoo that the frost had nipped it. 
He rubbed his nose vigorously with his bare hand, 
which he freed by pulling it out of the loose sleeve 
and putting it through the collar of the kapetah. 
Then he ran back to the iglooya. He had not been 
outside the snow house more than three minutes, 
but already he was very cold. Ky-oah-pah was 
right, he would stay inside until the moon came 
to the full again. 

Still holding his hand to his frost-nipped nose, 
the boy crept through the little door. He did not 
dare to go straight into the warmth of the iglooya, 
for if he did, his nose would suffer. The skin 


% mWm 



Aurora Borealis seen by McClintock. 
Pen-drawing by, leader of expedition whicli found Franklin’s only 

written record. 



Aurora Borealis seen by Dr. Kane. 

Pen-drawing by officer of expedition which met disaster during the 

Franklin search. 




. 

■ 














































































THE TWO MAGICS 


53 


would peel right off. So he waited in the vesti- 
bule, rubbing his nose with his warm hand until, 
at last, feeling began to return into it. Oh, how 
it burned with little shooting pains! Still, the 
frost bite had been very slight and Kood-shoo had 
not been far from the iglooya, so in five minutes ’ 
time his nose was all right again, and he ran in 
and climbed up on the breck. 

‘ 4 Ky-oah-pah, ’ ’ he said, as he scrambled up, 
“they’re playing another game of ball in the sky, 
now. ’ ’ 

He spoke of the Aurora Borealis, for the ange- 
kok had told him that these Northern Lights were 
the games of the dead children in the sky. Kood- 
shoo remembered that when one of his little play- 
mates had died, a ball had been left beside the 
body, so that, in the future life, the child might 
not lack the opportunity to play with his com- 
rades in the shining fields of the sky. 

To the lad’s surprise, however, the angekok did 
not answer, and looking at him closely, Kood-shoo 
saw that, while he was sitting bolt upright, he was 
as rigid as though frozen, with his eyeballs rolled 
back out of sight. Many a time had Kood-shoo 
seen his foster-father in this state and he knew 
that the magician was in a trance, or, as he used 


54 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


to call it himself, “that the feet of his breath were 
traveling. ’ ’ 

Kah-mon-apik stirred. As he awakened, his 
glance fell on Ky-oah-pah and he looked quickly 
across at Kood-shoo. Then the hunter, without 
any noise, cut off a piece of the raw seal meat for 
himself. To do so he did not need to stir from his 
bed, for the meat was across the little passage- 
way, two and a half feet wide, and Kah-mon-apik, 
like the others, had lain with his head towards the 
lamp. 

As he stirred, however, Mirk-tu-shar awakened 
and Kah-mon-apik cut off another piece for his 
companion. The munching of the two sets of jaws 
was the only sound that broke the silence. Kood- 
shoo looked longingly at the soup-pot, for he knew 
that Ky-oah-pah had been making a mixture of 
blood, oil, and the insides of the seal, a rare deli- 
cacy. Presently the smell of the soup grew to be 
stronger than Kood-shoo ’s patience. 

“ Kah-mon-apik, there’s soup!” he said in a 
low voice. 

The hunter looked upwards at the pot, lifted 
it down and took a large swallow of the boiling 
liquid, then handed the pot to Mirk-tu-shar. The 
second hunter followed suit and passed the vessel 


THE TWO MAGICS 


55 


to Kood-shoo. The boy took a large swallow and 
smacked his lips, for it tasted delicious to him, and 
hung the soup pot back on the rack. 

Then Kood-shoo, who, unlike his fellow-play- 
mates, was full of questions, asked Kah-mon-apik 
about the hunting of the oog-sook and the har- 
pooning of the seals. The hunter, after describ- 
ing the kill, said that he had seen walrus on 
the North Water and that he expected to harpoon 
one on the next hunting. 

While they sat talking, there came a distant 
hollow booming of the ice. Kah-mon-apik, alert 
in an instant, leaped from the breck, snatched mit- 
tens and kapetah and slipped through the door of 
the iglooya. Nothing was visible in the darkness 
and the falling snow, but Kah-mon-apik returned 
content. His Arctic sense told him that the ice 
beneath them was not moving. Besides, the dogs 
were still, and the hunter knew well that if there 
was any danger of the moving of the ice-pack, the 
dogs would have been restless and howling. 

“It must have been Qalutaligssuaq,” he said, 
“the Monster of the Ladles,” 

Mirk-tu-shar laughed. 

“Then Kood-shoo must frighten him with his 
big toe,” he declared. 


56 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

Kood-shoo stared at him. 

“ What’s that, Mirk-tu-shar?” he queried. 

“ Don’t you know the story of Qalutaligssuaq ?” 
the second hunter rejoined. 

“I never heard of him,” responded Kood-shoo. 
“Tell me the story.” 

The young hunter swallowed a large piece of 
raw seal meat on which he had been chewing, and 
began. 

“Many, many darknesses ago,” he said, “there 
was a monster in the sea that used to eat small 
children. He was especially fond of boys. He 
was as fond of boys, Kood-shoo, as you are fond 
of soup! 

“Whenever he got hungry, he would take two 
icebergs, and with his long nails, scoop them out 
into the shape of ladles. These he would beat to- 
gether to let the people know that he was hungry 
and must soon be fed. He was so big and fierce, 
that the people were afraid, and they would put 
the children on a piece of ice and send them off to 
sea for Qalutaligssuaq to eat. 

“But, one day, after Qalutaligssuaq had clashed 
together his ladles a great number of times, a boy, 
named Tan-op-nuk, who afterwards became a great 
hunter, determined to defy the monster. So, 


THE TWO MAGICS 


57 

when Qalutaligssuaq came near the shore, the hoy 
suddenly ran down to the beach without his shoes 
on, and, standing on his head, he waved his bare 
toes at the monster. 

11 6 Beware! Beware V he cried out, ‘Beware of 
my big toe that eats men ! ’ 

“And Kood-shoo, since Qalutaligssuaq’s big toe 
could not eat anything, the monster grew afraid 
of a creature which could do the things he could 
not. Frightened at the boy’s speech, Qalutalig- 
ssuaq swam out to sea and was never seen on the 
village shore again. But, to this day, we can 
still hear Qalutaligssuaq clapping his ladles in the 
distance to say that he is very hungry. ’ ’ 

“And has he never come back again, Mirk-tu- 
shar?” asked the boy. 

“Never,” the younger hunter replied. “For, 
whenever the clapping of the ladles sounds too 
close, all that one has to do is to say, 

“‘Beware! Beware! Beware of my big toe 
that eats men!’ 

“Then Qalutaligssuaq, thinking that he hears 
Tan-op-nuk speaking, swims out to sea again and 
does not dare to come close to the shore.” 

Many another story did Mirk-tu-shar tell the 
boy, as they lay in the iglooya on the ice, and still 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


58 

Ky-oah-pah sat bolt upright, rigid as though 
frozen, with his eyeballs rolled back out of sight. 
He sat thus for hours, and then, quite suddenly, he - 
moved, looked at the two men and at Kood-shoo, 
and without any preface, began to speak. 

“It has come to pass,” he said, “that the feet 
of my breath have been upon the sea. Yet I have 
not left the iglooya. Is it not true 1 9 9 

“The feet of your body have been in the 
iglooya,” answered Kah-mon-apik. He looked at 
the angekok with fear, for the hunter was afraid 
of all strange things, and he had been manifestly 
uncomfortable all the time that the angekok had 
been in the trance. 

“I have sledged with the winds for my dogs,” 
Ky-oah-pah continued, 4 ‘ and the bones of the dead 
winds for my sledge. The frost raced after me, 
but my breath was swifter and I left him far be- 
hind. I have seen the full sun in winter-time, 
even as the white men say ; I have trodden on the 
moss of lands that the feet of my body shall never 
tread. Ah, I am old and weak, Kah-mon-apik, but 
you, with all your strength, can never travel as I 
do, still.” 

“I am content with Paudiak,” answered the 
hunter, in a low voice. 


THE TWO MAGICS 


59 


“It is enough/ ’ declared the angekok, “keep 
to your hunting, Kah-mon-apik, for your breath 
is not trained to travel.” 

There was a pause and Mirk-tu-shar snuffed the 
moss-wick of the lamp, which was smoking. 

“My breath has dwelt with the white man for 
a space that seems like many years,” Ky-oah-pah 
continued, ‘ ‘ though my body has slept here only 
a little while. Yet, far away as I have been, there 
is one here that shall follow me. Listen closely, 
Kood-shoo, for the feet of my breath have trodden 
the trail that you shall sledge when you are grown 
a hunter like Kah-mon-apik. 

“It is true, Kood-shoo, as the black hunter from 
the Kig-ik-tag-miut said, who came with the nan : 
nook-soak, that you shall hunt in the land of 
silence, in the land where there is no meat. On 
the feet of my breath I have been there, and with 
the eyes of my breath I have seen it . 9 ’ 

“And shall I be there alone?” asked the boy. 

“No, you will not be alone,” the angekok re- 
plied, “you will be with the qavdlunat, the white 
men. You will seek the end of the world, the end 
where everything is down a hill, and you shall al- 
most find it.” 

“Shall I never really find it?” 


6o 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


“No. You will turn back.” 

“Will any one find it, Ky-oah-pah?” 

“Yes,” said the angekok, “the qavdlunat shall 
find it.” 

“Where is this end of the world?” put in Mirk- 
tu-shar. “Is there an edge like a cliff?” 

“The end is the middle,” came the answer. 
“What it means I do not understand myself. Yet 
I stood there with six men and the wind whispered 
to the ears of my breath that this was truly the 
end. Still, so far as the eyes of my breath could 
see, I stood on a plain of ice, with ice on every 
side. ’ 7 

“Were all the six, white men?” queried Kood- 
shoo. 

“No,” said the angekok, “four were Innuit 
(Eskimo). One was a white man, the other had 
a face like the sky in winter.” 

“Are you sure I wasn’t one of the four?” cried 
the lad. 

“You were not one of the four,” came back the 
positive reply. “Your nose will freeze, Kood- 
shoo, and you will turn back before the end. The 
older hunters will go on. It will be for you to 
bring the white men’s magic back to the white 
men’s ship. 


THE TWO MAGICS 


61 


“Into strange lands yon will travel, always with 
the qavdlunat, and you will learn to speak their 
language. You shall be friends with a white 
man’s baby daughter and you shall have a gun 
like Peary-soak and a sharp knife like Kah-mon- 
apik.” 

The lad’s eyes sparkled and he bounced up and 
down with pleasure on the caribou skins where he 
sat. Never, even in his wildest dreams, had he 
expected to have a gun ! 

“Strange fire-stones will fall from the sky and 
you shall be the only one to see them, and when 
the white men come, the Woman and the Dog will 
be shown to them by you alone.” 

“What woman and what dog, Ky-oali-pah?” 
asked the boy, seeing that his interruptions did 
not interfere with the angekok’s story. 

“The Fire- Woman and the Fire-Dog,” the old 
man answered, “but the Fire-Tent you will not 
find. Only, the head of the Fire-Woman the white 
men shall never get, Torn-uk-soak will give it to 
the sea. 

“Songs, too, Kood-shoo, you will learn to sing, 
that you may sing them to the white men. You 
will run from place to place, as a wolf upon an 
ice-floe, seeking the Innuit songs, and your own 


62 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


home. Many, many songs yon shall learn to sing, 
but Itti-bloo will never hear them. 

“And at the last, Kood-shoo, you shall go as 
you came, on a piece of drifting ice. 

“But, Kood-shoo, keep up a hunter’s heart, 
when that time comes, for Torn-uk-soak will still 
be with you. On this piece of ice, the nannook- 
soak will climb and threaten you. You must not 
kill him, even though you have a white man’s 
gun in your hand. Instead, you shall strike the 
nannook on the nose and he will drop into the 
water, and kill a seal for you. That seal you 
may eat, for it is Torn-uk-soak’s last gift. 

“Eat slowly of that meat, Kood-shoo. Hold 
fast to the oomiak of ice and it will dash you on 
a shore where no Innuit foot has trodden, not even 
mine, save for the feet of my breath, feet that 
leave no foot-print. 

“And there, sitting on the beach, sheltered from 
the storm, you will find a man without feet, mak- 
ing black pictures on the shoulder blade of a wal- 
rus. Show that man your magic, Kood-shoo, for 
it is for him to see. But what will happen after 
— that I have not seen.” 


CHAPTER III 


FIGHTING THE WALRUS 

For two long weeks Kood-shoo never left the 
iglooya, but after the blackest part of the darkness 
had passed, when, indeed, the little-girl-moon was 
beginning to wake up and the boy could see faintly 
over the ice, Kood-shoo was told to begin his fish- 
ing. 

“ Bring us a char,” urged Kah-mon-apik, “and 
then, perhaps, Kood-shoo, we will take you on the 
walrus hunt.” 

“I’ll bring two!” declared Kood-shoo, “and 
that’ll make it sure!” 

The hope of a walrus-hunt was a stimulating 
promise, and the boy needed it, for fishing, in Es- 
kimo-land, is not exciting sport. It is very slow, 
very tiring and very cold. Mirk-tu-shar went 
with the lad to dig the hole in the ice and to put up 
a wind-break made of snow. It was still dark 
and cold. 

Kood-shoo and Mirk-tu-shar traveled for about 
a quarter of a mile from the iglooya before they 
63 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


64 

came to young ice, or ice which had formed that 
winter over the open sea. 

‘ ‘How can you tell where the young ice will be, 
Mirk-tu-shar?” asked the boy. He knew well 
enough the look of the freshly frozen surface, once 
that it was found, but was puzzled how to find it. 

“It is quite easy,” answered the younger 
hunter. “All the old ice is in ridges. You can tell 
from the look of it which is the old ice and in what 
way it has been packed together by the moving of 
the water. At the edge of a big floe, the water 
flows fast and breaks the ice apart, so that in the 
summer-time, the water runs between the floes. 
See, Kood-shoo, the pressure-ridges run in this 
direction, so that the young ice must be over 
there. ’ ’ 

Mirk-tu-shar was right. Scarcely three minutes 
later, the two came to a stretch of ice that bore a 
faint shade of green, even under the dim moon- 
light. There were yet six weeks before Kood- 
shoo would see the sun. 

Selecting a suitable spot, the younger hunter, 
with a long sharp-edged stone tool, chipped away 
the ice, which was three feet thick. The work 
went fast, for Mirk-tu-shar was skilled and strong. 
In a little while a hole was made through the ice, 


FIGHTING THE WALRUS 65 

about two and a half feet across, and the water 
came swirling up from below, almost level with 
the top of the hole. 

“The water runs fast,” said Mirk-tu-shar ; “you 
may catch many fish . 9 9 

“I’ve got to catch two , ’ 9 declared the boy, ‘ ‘ and 
if I do, I’m going to make Kah-mon-apik take me 
on that walrus trip . 9 9 

“He will take you, I think,” rejoined the 
younger hunter, and he drew out his snow knife 
and began to cut blocks, just like those which had 
been used by Ky-oah-pah in building the iglooya. 

“Supposing you had dug that hole in the old 
ice,” queried Kood-shoo, “how deep would it have 
been!” 

The younger hunter laughed. 

“So deep that if every one in the village should 
stand on each other’s shoulders there would not be 
people enough to reach from the bottom to the 
top,” he said. 

“As deep as that!” exclaimed Kood-shoo, 
astonished. “No wonder you looked for young 
ice. It would take the length of a hunting moon 
to dig a hole. ’ ’ 

“It could not be dug at all,” replied the other. 
“How would you get the broken pieces up!” 


66 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


Mirk-tu-shar was working as he talked and soon 
the curving snow wall was in place. It was about 
four feet high and four feet wide at the inside ends 
of the semi-circle. Right in the middle of the arc, 
and about one foot from the edge of the hole, the 
hunter placed a snow block, fourteen inches high. 
This was to serve as a seat. 

Kood-shoo promptly sat down, to try it. 

“Is it comfortable the hunter asked. 

“Just right,’ ’ the boy answered. 

He unwound his fish-line and the decoy, and low- 
ered them into the water in the hole. Mirk-tu- 
shar took the fish-spear, which was about five feet 
long, with a line of twisted sinews attached to the 
head of it, and stuck it in the snow, convenient to 
Kood-shoo ’s right hand. Then, with an encour- 
aging word, he returned to the iglooya, where he 
was helping Kah-mon-apik to strengthen the 
sledges for the big walrus trip. 

Kood-shoo needed no bait for his fishing. If 
live bait were necessary there could be no fishing 
in Eskimo-land, for there are no flies in winter, 
no worms, nothing at which a fish would bite. 
There is no way of catching little fish, for all the 
shore ice is frozen hard. So the fishing line that 
Kood-shoo used had neither bait nor hook. In- 



Waiting for the Seal. 

Note harpoon lying ready to hand near the blowhole. 



Holding Harpooned Seal. 

Note weapon transfixed in animal’s head while Eskimo keeps the 

line taut. 



d 


Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History . 

Fishing Through the Ice. 

Eskimo woman sitting — perhaps for many hours — awaiting appearance 
of char rising to the decoy. 





- 



















FIGHTING THE WALRUS 67 

stead, at the end of the line, was fastened a tiny 
fish carved out of ivory, very thin and slightly 
curved. As Kood-shoo jerked the line up and 
down, by the motion of his wrist, the ivory fish 
spun in the water, so that it looked as though it 
were alive. 

Aside from this up and down motion of the 
wrist, Kood-shoo dared not stir. Sitting on the 
block of snow, with his feet on that one foot of 
ice between the block and the hole, he must not 
move at all, for if he did, any fish that might be 
swimming below would be frightened away. 

As hours might pass before a fish appeared, 
Kood-shoo was warmly dressed. His shoes, of 
strong bull-seal skin, with the hair inside, were 
sewn tightly to his bearskin trousers, with the hair 
outside. To make sure that no air could creep in, 
a draw string made of sinew held the bottoms of 
the trousers close in to the leg. 

His kapetah, or long coat, made of fox skins, 
with the fur outside, came all the way to the 
ground as he sat down, and the long apron-like 
part in front covered his knees. His mittens, of 
young seal, with the hair outside, reached almost 
to his elbow, and the sleeves of the kapetah came 
far down over his wrists. Around the wrists were 


68 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


sewn two big fuzzy fox tails, on the inside edge of 
the sleeve, so that no air could enter. 

The hood, which covered Kood-shoo >s neck and 
head, also was made of fox skins and was sewed 
fast to the collar of the kapetah. There were no 
fastenings, the whole kapetah was put on as one 
puts on a sweater, but there was a sinew draw- 
string at the collar, to hold it close at the neck. 
The hood was pulled down over the forehead to 
the eyes, and fitted close to the face on either side, 
covering the ears, most of the cheeks and the chin. 
All round the edge of the hood was sewn a bushy 
fox tail, which stood out about five inches from his 
face, so that the wind would be stopped by the 
fur from blowing directly upon his nose. 

Underneath, Kood-shoo wore an inside shirt of 
bird skins, with the feathers next the skin, the 
warmest and the cosiest garment possible. Kood- 
shoo *s was small, for he had not yet grown very 
big, yet there were sixty bird skins in the shirt. 
They were the skins of the Little Auk, tanned 
with the feathers on. It made a queer looking 
shirt, for the Little Auk has a black back with a 
white breast and the wings are black with a few 
white feathers. The wings, of course, were re- 
moved before making the shirt. 


FIGHTING THE WALRUS 69 

In spite of this warm clothing, Kood-shoo grew 
cold and stiff, as the hours passed by and he might 
not move a muscle. He was getting hungry, too, 
for although he was not exerting himself in any 
way, mere bodily resistance to the intense cold 
used up his vitality. More than once he looked 
longingly at the iglooya, the rounded top of which 
he could just distinguish shimmering in the dark- 
ness. It so reminded him of warmth and food. 
But Kood-shoo knew well that Kah-mon-apik 
would not think him grown up if he returned too 
soon without a fish, and so he huddled a little 
closer and sat still. 

Suddenly he stirred. 

Was that a faint gleam of silver in the water, 
flashing past the bottom of the dark hole? 

Without moving his feet, Kood-shoo rose and 
took the fish spear in his hand. 

Again a gleam of silvered shadow in the water. 

Then with a swirl, a char rose at the ivory fish, 
and as it shot upwards, Kood-shoo ’s arm came 
down. 

The stroke was true and strong. The spear 
entered the fish and as it darted away at the shock 
into the water below the ice, the barbs on either 
side of the spear-head sprang out and gripped it. 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


70 

A few feet of the sinew line ran out before Kood- 
shoo could grasp it firmly, and when he wound it 
round his arm, with a sudden twist, the jar nearly 
wrenched his arm from its socket. But the barbs 
held firm. 

“Ty-ma! Ty-ma!” (Success!) he cried, and 
held fast with all his might. 

The char dashed forward and back, each time 
that he came to the end of the sinew line giving a 
wrench that jolted Kood-shoo to his very bones. 
But he gripped tightly, for he knew that if he 
could hold out for a few minutes, the char would 
soon grow tired. 

Three more wild plunges, the last one almost 
strong enough to pull the lad down into the hole 
and then the fish grew quiet. Quickly Kood-shoo 
pulled in a few feet of sinew and braced himself 
for another tug-of-war. 

It was easier this time, for the fish had less 
room to charge and every tug that it had made had 
settled the barbs more deeply in its flesh. Be- 
sides, the spear wound in the back was weakening 
it. The struggle lasted but a few minutes longer 
and then Kood-shoo, pulling on the line, brought 
the big fish to the surface. Once in the hole, a 


FIGHTING THE WALRUS 71 

violent flurry almost gained the fish its liberty, so 
eager was Kood-shoo to grasp the prize, but at 
last, the boy laid the char flapping on the ice. It 
was a noble fish, over two feet long and weighing 
almost ten pounds. 

“I’ll get that walrus trip!” cried Kood-shoo 
aloud, exultantly, and grasping his fish-spear in 
one hand and the char in the other, he set out on 
a dead run for the iglooya. 

“ Kah-mon-apik ! ” he shouted, while he was 
crawling through the doorway. “I’ve got a big 
one ! ’ ’ 

And he produced his prize in conscious pride. 

“Did you miss any!” asked the hunter, after he 
had duly praised the boy for his catch. 

“Not a single one,” replied Kood-shoo. “This 
was the only one I saw, and I didn’t move once 
from the time that Mirk-tu-shar left the hole.” 

“It is thus that hunters are made,” said Kah- 
mon-apik, approvingly. “To learn to wait is the 
most important lesson for a hunter.” 

“Can I go with you on the walrus trip for 
sure!” begged the boy. 

“You said you would bring two fish,” Kah-mon- 
apik reminded him. 


72 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


‘ ‘ 1 ’ll go right off now ! ’ ’ 

This ambition was countermanded by Ky-oah- 
pah. 

“ There’s some of the soup, still,” he said. 

Kood-shoo immediately grew hungry, and 
reached out his hands for the soapstone bowl. It 
was boiling hot and he waited a moment for it to 
cool so that it should not scald his mouth. As 
he sat there, the warmth of the iglooya began 
to creep into his bones and his head began to nod. 
By the time that the soup was cool enough to 
drink, Kood-shoo found it hard to keep his eyes 
open, and before he realized it, he was fast asleep. 

“He will really make a hunter,” declared Kah- 
mon-apik, as he spread the caribou skins over the 
sleeping lad. 

When at last Kood-shoo woke and looked 
around, only the old angekok was to be seen. 

“Are they gone!” cried Kood-shoo. “Gone 
without me?” 

“They have not gone for walrus,” explained 
Ky-oah-pah, “they have taken the oog-sook to our 
last camp to cache it. Mirk-tu-shar caught a seal 
yesterday, and Kah-mon-apik seems to be sure of 
getting walrus soon. He wanted to have empty 
sledges for the end of the hunting.” 


FIGHTING THE WALRUS 


73 


4 ‘ Oh, that *s it ! ’ ’ 

Kood-shoo felt relieved, for he feared he had 
lost his chance by going to sleep. A large chunk 
of seal meat, boiled with the fish, restored his 
energy to the full. 

“I’d like to get that second fish before Kah- 
mon-apik comes home, ,, he announced, and jumped 
down from the breck. 

Once, the year before, when Kood-shoo was 
fishing, the head of a seal had appeared in the 
hole beneath him, and he had known that the seal 
must have had breathing holes near by. He had 
not been able to find them. Ever since that time, 
however, the boy had taken a seal-harpoon with 
him when he went fishing, and, when he was near- 
ing home with the char, the day before, Kood- 
shoo was sure he had heard a seal blow, and he 
had marked the place. 

“Can I have your harpoon again, Ky-oah-pahr’ 
he asked, as he was leaving. 

“Yes,” the old sage replied. 

The angekok seldom went out on the ice with the 
hunters, he was too old. He was the only old man 
in the village, for among the Eskimos, it is seldom 
that any one dies of old age. Every one has to 
hunt, in order to live, and when men grow old and 


74 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


their limbs stiffen, disaster easily overtakes them 
on the ice. Only Ky-oah-pah’s fame as an ange- 
kok and Kah-mon-apik’s ability to catch food in 
plenty, had prolonged the old man’s life. Had he 
been forced to depend on his own energy to hunt, 
Ky-oah-pah would not have had long to live. 

Little did Kood-shoo know, as he started back 
and nearly reached the hole where he had caught 
the char, that again good fortune was to favor him. 
He was passing by the place where he had heard 
the seal breathe, when he heard it again. He 
stopped like a statue and peered around for the 
hole. He knew that somewhere there must be a 
funnel shaped hole in the ice, kept open by the 
sharp teeth of the seal, but covered from sight by 
the unbroken surface of the snow. The seal might 
have many such breathing holes or only one. 

Suddenly the blowing came again, right under 
his very feet. Instinctively and resolutely Kood- 
shoo drove downwards with the harpoon, drop- 
ping the fish-spear as he did so. Had it been Kah- 
mon-apik who threw that harpoon, the seal would 
have had very little chance, but Kood-shoo ’s 
strength was not as that of the mighty hunter. 
The harpoon merely pierced the skin and the blub- 
ber of the seal. Still, it held. 


FIGHTING THE WALRUS 75 

Then came a tussle ! The seal was in his native 
element and threshed about furiously. Fortu- 
nately for Kood-shoo, he was able to keep the line 
sufficiently taut to prevent the seal from sinking 
below the level of the ice, where his powerful flip- 
pers would have a chance for free play. If that 
happened, Kood-shoo could never hold him. But 
the boy had lots of grit and pulled for all he was 
worth. It was more dangerous for Kood-shoo 
than he realized, for if he had held on too long or 
if the coils of the harpoon thong had entangled 
him, he would have been drawn in under the ice- 
floe. 

Then an idea occurred to him. Still holding the 
line as tightly as he could, he ran around the snow 
wind-break which had been made of blocks of snow 
at the time that the fishing hole in the ice was dug, 
days before. The snow blocks had gradually set- 
tled down and frozen into a solid wall and this 
gave the boy the necessary purchase to hold the 
wounded seal. Quickly, as quickly as he could in 
his clumsy skin mittens, Kood-shoo took the long 
thong, made of thin strips of plaited walrus-hide, 
and knotted it. 

Then he raced through the darkness to the 
iglooya for help. 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


76 

“Ky-oah-pah! Ky-oah-pah ! ’ ’ he called, as he 
wriggled excitedly through the door. “I’ve got 
a seal!” 

“ A seal?” 

“Yes, and he’ll get away. Come, Ky-oah-pah, 
come quickly. Here are your mittens.” He tore 
them down from the rack. i ‘ Quick ! ’ ’ 

The hoy’s excitement was infectious and the 
angekok rapidly donned his furs, grasped a har- 
poon and hurried to the hole, Kood-shoo follow- 
ing with an extra weapon. As they got there, the 
frozen wall was toppling under the seal’s re- 
peated plunges. 

The angekok, who had been a famous hunter 
years before, seized his harpoon and drove it 
downwards into the seal’s body. It was a good 
stroke. 

‘ 4 Ooh ! That ’s like Kah-mon-apik ! ’ ’ said Kood- 
shoo. “ We ’ve got him now. ’ ’ 

Ky-oah-pah smiled. The weakness of old age 
had come over him, indeed, but his hand had not 
lost its cunning. 

“Still, it is your seal,” he answered. 

The day was terribly cold — if day it could be 
called, when the only light was a faint moonlight 
and the waving red and green shadows of the 


FIGHTING THE WALRUS 


77 

Aurora Borealis — but Kood-shoo was so excited 
that he was boiling hot. He would have pulled off 
his mittens to grasp the thong better, but the an- 
gekok restrained him. Ky-oah-palTs stroke had 
been sure and swift, and soon the seal ceased to 
struggle. 

Together the two pulled the animal out and 
Kood-shoo jumped with delight. 

“My first seal!” he cried. 

The angekok bent down. 

“It is a young oog-sook,” he said, “see, Kood- 
shoo, already the tusks are beginning to grow. 
You can make a little kayak of them and give it to 
In-nook-shee-ah . 9 9 

The boy looked down thoughtfully. 

“No,” he said slowly. “I have killed an oog- 
sook. Pm a hunter now. I will not make toys. 
I will make barbs for a fish spear from the tusks.” 

The angekok looked at the lad curiously. Often 
Kood-shoo spoke so differently from the Eskimo 
children of the village that the old man wondered. 
Truly, he thought, the Eskimo of Baffin Land must 
be different. Still, he fell in readily with the 
boy’s humor. 

“It is for the hunter to flense the seal,” he said 
gravely. “Will you begin?” 


78 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

Kood-shoo took out his little knife. Though 
scarcely more than a toy, it was very sharp. He 
bent down to cut the skin. 

“Take this,” said the angekok, and handed him 
the big ivory knife made from a narwhal’s tusk. 

The boy took the knife, and using all his force, 
drove it into the underside of the dead seal. Un- 
der the angekok ’s instructions, the skin was soon 
removed, the blubber cut in strips and carried into 
the iglooya and then the meat secured. It was a 
tired but very happy boy who settled beneath the 
caribou skins when the work was done. 

Kood-shoo was wakened by the return of the 
hunters. They had been out to make a short sur- 
vey, not to hunt, for as yet the light was too faint. 
Not until the moon grew brighter would they start 
for walrus. 

“Behold, a hunter!” said Ky-oah-pah to Kah- 
mon-apik, as the leader entered the iglooya, and 
he pointed to the skin of the young oog-sook. 

“Very good,” answered Kah-mon-apik. “We 
have seen walrus, Mirk-tu-shar and I, and we will 
take Kood-shoo, the hunter, with us when the 
moon grows big.” 

So it happened that when, a week later, Kah- 


FIGHTING THE WALRUS 79 

mon-apik and Mirk-tu-shar started with the two 
dog-teams, Kood-shoo went along with them to 
the edge of the North Water, where, even in the 
depth of winter, leads were constantly opening. 

The camp which the hunters were leaving, where 
Kood-shoo had helped to build the iglooya, had 
been situated at the head of Whale Sound, where 
that great body of water opens into Smith Sound. 
Under the angekok’s advice, the iglooya had been 
placed not far from Littleton Island. The ice 
there was firm, and yet, as events proved, it was 
close enough to young ice for fishing, for such 
holes such as those where Kood-shoo caught the 
char and the seal. 

4 ‘ Have we far to go, Kah-mon-apik V ’ asked 
Kood-shoo, as soon as they had started. 

“Two sleeps,’ ’ replied the hunter. 

“Why are the walrus so far away,” continued 
the boy, “when seal are so close? Doesn’t a wal- 
rus ever come up in a fishing hole ? ’ ’ 

“No,” the hunter answered. “He seldom goes 
under the ice to any great distance. He does not 
breathe at holes, like a seal.” 

“How does the walrus catch fish, then?” 

“The walrus does not catch fish,” the observant 


8o 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


hunter answered, “I have never seen a fish in the 
stomach of any walrus I have killed. ’ ’ 

“But what else is there for him to eat, Kah- 
mon-apik?” questioned the boy in surprise. “I 
don’t know of anything to eat in the water but 
fish?” 

“Why do you think a walrus has those long 
tusks?” 

“To fight with,” answered Kood-shoo promptly. 

“He does fight with them,” agreed the hunter, 
“but that is only a small matter to the walrus. 
He uses those tusks to get his food.” 

The boy stared at him in surprise. Rack his 
brains as he would, he could think of nothing in 
the sea that would require the use of tusks as long 
as a man’s arm from shoulder to wrist. 

“You’re making this up,” he declared at last. 
‘ 1 Tell me the truth, Kah-mon-apik. ’ ’ 

“ It is the truth, ’ ’ the hunter said calmly. ‘ 4 The 
walrus lives on clams, which he finds in the sand 
at the bottom of the sea where it is shallow. 
Swimming near the bottom he scoops those long 
tusks of his that turn downward, through the sand, 
grubbing up the shell-fish. Then he cracks them 
with his teeth, licks out the inside of the clams 
and spits away the shells. ’ ’ 


FIGHTING THE WALRUS 81 


“I’d never have thought that anything as big as 
a walrus could get enough to eat that way!” de- 
clared Kood-shoo. 

“It's not always the biggest creatures that eat 
the most,” the hunter replied, “a seal will eat al- 
most half his weight in fish every day while a 
whale eats nothing but water. ’ ’ 

“Doesn’t a whale eat fish either?” 

“Not a ‘right’ whale,” answered the hunter, 
“you ought to know that, Kood-shoo. Didn’t you 
look into the mouth of that whale that was cast 
up on the beach in the storm two sunshine-times 
ago?” 

Kood-shoo nodded. 

“I’d forgotten all about that,” he said. “Of 
course, his mouth was all filled up with whalebone, 
a fish couldn’t get through. But what does a 
whale eat, Kah-mon-apik ? He can’t live on noth- 
ing?” 

“I always thought that a whale lived on water,” 
the hunter replied, “but one of the white men last 
year told me that there are many animals in the 
sea so small that the eyes of an Innuit can not see 
them. When the whale fills his mouth with water 
and spits it out through his whalebone sieve, all 
these little animals stay in his mouth and he swal- 


82 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


lows them. Then the whale takes another mouth- 
ful of water, spits that out also and finds another 
handful of these small things in his mouth. He 
can eat all the time. ’ ’ 

“And is that all he gets?” asked the boy. 

“That’s all. So, you see, Kood-shoo,” the 
hunter went on, “the walrus is bigger than the 
seal and eats smaller food, the whale is much big- 
ger than the walrus and eats food smaller still.” 

During this talk the sledges had been advancing, 
and Kah-mon-apik, for the first time recognizing 
Kood-shoo as a young hunter, taught him the con- 
ditions of the ice. He explained the ice foot, that 
wide section of ice around every island or piece 
of land, which, being frozen fast to the shore, does 
not rise and fall with the tides. 

“The big hills that come floating down, Kood- 
shoo,” said the hunter, “are pieces that break off 
from the rivers of ice (glaciers). They are very 
deep. If you look carefully you can see where the 
floe-ice joins them. Be cautious, when you build 
an iglooya near a hill of ice, that you do not put 
it on the place where the floe-ice joins the iceberg.” 

“Why not, Kah-mon-apik?” 

“Because the iceberg is a cousin to the ice-floe, 
not a brother, and they will quarrel and break 



Pinnacle Berg frozen fast in Floe Ice. 



Table Berg frozen fast in Pack Ice 






FIGHTING THE WALRUS 83 

apart. If an iglooya is on the floe, it will be 
canght in the breaking ice. Build it on a flat piece 
of the iceberg, if you must, or else on the other 
side of a pressure ridge, but never between a pres- 
sure ridge and the iceberg. ’ 9 
‘ 1 Where does the floe-ice come from, then, Kah- 
mon-apik?” asked the lad. 

“Floe-ice is snow,” the hunter answered. “It 
is old ice that has drifted down, with many, many 
years of snow on it. The snow has turned into 
snow-ice. You remember, Kood-shoo, when you 
cut the blocks for our iglooya that the bottom of 
the block was harder to cut than the top ? ’ 9 
Kood-shoo nodded. 

“That is because the bottom is turning into 
ice,” the hunter continued. “If you dig a hole 
there, the snow-ice will become harder and harder 
until it is as hard to cut as water-ice. But it is 
white, quite white, not green. A thin slice of 
water-ice you can see through. Once I made a 
window in an iglooya with a slice of ice. But 
snow ice is like stone, you cannot see through it 
at all. What the white men call ‘ ice-pans ’ are 
made of pieces of the floe that have been broken 
off. Young ice is the water that has frozen dur- 
ing the winter.” 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


84 

“What I don’t understand,” said the hoy 
slowly, “is why the sea doesn’t stay frozen all the 
time. It isn’t hot enough in summer to melt 
it all.” 

“If you want to be a hunter,” said Kah-mon- 
apik, “you must know where the ice goes just as 
much as you must know about the habits of the 
animals you hunt. You must know that the seal 
may be caught in a blow-hole, that the walrus is 
never found where the water is deep, that the nar- 
whal likes the open sea, and the whale is found 
among pieces of broken ice floe. This is a 
hunter’s knowledge.” 

“You know it all, don’t you!” exclaimed the 
boy admiringly. 

“I have learned much from Ky-oah-pah,” Kah- 
mon-apik answered. “He was a great hunter, 
once. It was Ky-oah-pah who told me about the 
ice. See, Kood-shoo, the water all flows to the 
land of the white men (the south). There the sea 
is warm. When the ice breaks in the summer 
time, the bergs float past the coast. You have 
seen them often. ’ ’ 

“That’s right,” agreed the boy thoughtfully, 
“I’ve never seen ice drift the other way.” 

“It can only drift in the way that the water 


FIGHTING THE WALRUS 85 

flows, ’ ’ proceeded the other, ‘ ‘ and when it reaches 
the warm water, it melts, like ice in the bowl over 
an iglooya lamp. All summer long the ice drifts 
to the white man’s land, and every winter, more 
of the sea is frozen and more ice is made on the 
frozen rivers of the land. The white men told me 
that in their land it is all water and in the land of 
the Aurora Borealis (to the north) it is all ice. 
We live in the middle, Kood-shoo, where it is all 
ice in the winter, and both water and ice in the 
summer . ’ 1 

‘ ‘ Then why don’t you go down to the white 
men’s water for walrus?” questioned the boy. 

“We go where the water runs swiftest,” the 
hunter answered, “for when the water flows fast 
it does not freeze so easily.” 

“Where is that?” the boy asked. 

“The white men call it the North Water,” was 
the reply. “It is the water which drifted you 
and the nannook-soak down to the village, when 
you were quite a baby. If you should jump on 
a piece of ice, near the cape where we will hunt the 
walrus, Kood-shoo, you would drift right down to 
the point near which the village stands where you 
were found. We lived at Ip-soo-e-shaw then, not 
at Itti-bloo.” 


86 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


The boy looked thoughtful. 

“It must be an awfully swift current,” he said. 

Kood-shoo was right. Baffin Bay is the great 
basin into which nearly all the polar ice from the 
Arctic region north of the American continent 
finds its way into the ocean. The ice from the 
North Pole is driven through almost impassable 
Robeson Channel, Hall Basin and the Kennedy 
Channel. Thence it grinds and piles into that 
menace of explorers known as Kane Basin, be- 
tween the north-west corner of Greenland and 
Grinnel Land. By this route Peary reached the 
Pole. 

To the west, down the rushing torrent of Jones 
Sound and Cadogan Strait, a rapid of foaming 
water and masses of ice pours down from King 
Oscar Land and the region in the neighborhood of 
Crocker Land where no one yet has ever been. 
When Sverdrup tried to force his way through 
Kane Basin, for two whole years, and was beaten 
and battered back each time, he turned up Jones 
Sound, only to find that no ship could face that 
powerful surge of floating ice-blocks and live. 
This torrent of water, striking into Baffin Bay, 
sweeps clear across the Bay, flowing with so much 
force that even in that ice-bound region, an open 


FIGHTING THE WALRUS 87 

passage of deep water is kept most of the summer 
through. This was the great North Water, of 
which Kah-mon-apik was speaking, where Kood- 
shoo would hunt the walrus, and down which the 
cake of ice had drifted on which the boy had first 
been found. 

Further to the south and west, the masses of 
ice plunge through Lancaster Sound from the 
Parry Island and Melville Sound region, and this 
current, flowing between North Devon and Baffin 
Land, sweeps also across Baffin Bay, forming what 
the whalers call the Middle Water. Strictly, it is 
never an open channel, but rather a channel where 
the ice is sufficiently broken for a vessel to crash 
through. By this stern route Sir Herbert Parry 
traveled a century ago and made his farthest 
north. 

Yet even this is not all the pressure that pours 
into Baffin Bay from the west, for great glaciers 
on the north of Baffin Land and from Bylot Island 
discharge through Eclipse Sound. This stream, 
being fed by glaciers on the east coast of Baffin 
Land strikes across the Bay, forming the equally 
important passage known as the South Water. 
This current, reaching the west coast of Green- 
land, in the neighborhood of Disko Island, has 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


made that island the most populous point on the 
west Greenland shore and a port of call for every 
vessel headed for the north in those waters. The 
ice of Davis Strait hngs the Baffin Land shore, as 
the current of the North Water, Middle Water and 
South Water hug the eastern shore, and keep the 
Greenland passage always open from the ice. 
Through the South Water passed the ill-fated 
Franklin expedition. 

The entire Baffin Bay and Davis Strait thus 
looks one solid sheet of ice, under which three 
swift ocean currents flow. Only a keen-eyed ice- 
skipper can pick the channels under the ice and 
force his ship through. In winter, all these are 
frozen fast, with leads or lanes of water here and 
there. 

That night, when the hunters had covered three 
parts of the distance to Cape Kangahsuk on the 
North Water, an iglooya was built. With his ex- 
perience of three weeks before, Kood-shoo was of 
great assistance, but he was surprised to see the 
speed with which Kah-mon-apik and Mirk-tu-shar 
put up the hut. In less than an hour from the time 
that the sledges had halted, the iglooya was 
erected, the food eaten, the dogs fed and every one 
was fast asleep. 


FIGHTING THE WALRUS 89 

Next day, after only a couple of hours’ travel- 
ing, Kah-mon-apik, who was driving the leading 
dog-team, halted. 

4 ‘There is the current,” he said, pointing at 
what looked like a continuation of the ice-field. 

Kood-shoo looked around him. The moon was 
shining brightly now, and its reflection on the ice 
gave a silver-blue light in which everything could 
be seen, though indistinctly. Yet, in spite of all 
the instruction Kah-mon-apik had given him, 
Kood-shoo could not tell the difference between the 
ice on which they stood and the ice on which they 
had been traveling for an hour previously. 

“How can you tell, Kah-mon-apik V 9 he asked. 

The hunter took him by the shoulder. 

“Watch my finger,” he said. 

Kood-shoo looked along the pointing finger, 
into the blue lit darkness. The digit traveled in 
short angles, marking off irregular zig-zag pieces, 
like those of a puzzle. And then, suddenly, Kood- 
shoo caught the knack of seeing. 

“Wait! Wait! Kah-mon-apik,” he cried. “I 
think I see! Is this right?” 

And with his own finger he continued to draw 
the pattern of the ice blocks. 

Kah-mon-apik nodded in pleasure. 


90 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


“It is right,’ ’ he said. “Those are old blocks 
newly frozen. Between them the ice is very thin. 
We must go carefully, for in places there will be 
water. We are not far from the cape of the wal- 
rus. Remember, Kood-shoo, whenever you see 
ice in a zig-zag pattern, thus, you are on a current 
of the sea and must sledge carefully. ’ ’ 

They did not travel long after that when Mirk- 
tu-shar held up his hand. 

‘ 6 Awick ! ” he said. 1 1 W alrus ! ’ ’ 

Kood-shoo listened, and in the silence he could 
hear the distant roaring and blowing of the ani- 
mals. 

“It is a herd,” Kah-mon-apik said joyously. 
“There will be meat in the village this winter. 
We will stop the sledges here.” 

The wary hunter examined the ice carefully, 
selecting a floe of large size. The ice might break 
apart under their feet at any moment, though it 
was unlikely, and it would not do for the teams 
and sledges to be on too small a surface of ice. 
Then, with Kah-mon-apik leading the way, the 
three hunters advanced cautiously. At every 
crack, or young piece of the ice, Kah-mon-apik 
stopped and studied the formation of the floe, and 
then passed on. 


FIGHTING THE WALRUS 


9i 


“What are you looking for, Kah-mon-apik?” 
asked Kood-shoo. 

“To make sure of the road back,” came the 
reply. 

It was not for nothing that Kah-mon-apik had 
the reputation of being the “big hunter” of the 
village. In Polar regions the road back is far 
more important than the road forward. Most 
Arctic expeditions that have suffered wreck have 
failed because of neglect to observe this simple 
rule of Kah-mon-apik. 

The blowing and the roaring of the walrus 
sounded nearer. Kah-mon-apik, who was in the 
lead, waved his hand with a backward gesture. 
Mirk-tu-shar stopped. A less experienced eye 
than that of Kah-mon-apik would have seen no 
danger in the path, but the wise leader of the party 
knew that the ice was unsafe. Keeping well to 
his rear, Mirk-tu-shar and Kood-shoo skirted this 
sheet of ice, which now showed in the distance a 
line of black water. A hundred yards more to the 
right and then Kah-mon-apik pointed with his 
finger. 

There were the walrus ! 

Kood-shoo gave a cry of disappointment. 

All the walrus were on the other side of the lead 


92 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


of water, their big forms faintly visible in the dim 
moonlight. 

“Mirk-tu-shar !” he cried, “we have no kayak 
here! How will we get the awick?” 

“We will leave that to Kah-mon-apik, ’ ’ said the 
younger hunter, “he will find a way. ’ ’ 

The Eskimo walked cautiously along the edge of 
the ice, looking longingly at the walrus across the 
lead of water. Soon the black lane narrowed. At 
places it might be safe to cross. Several times 
Kood-shoo would have taken a chance, but Mirk- 
tu-shar held him back. 

“It does not matter how a man goes forward,’ ’ 
the younger hunter reminded him , 4 ‘ the only thing 
of importance is the road back. ’ ’ 

“But you can always come back the way you 
went!” protested Kood-shoo, who was afraid that 
Kah-mon-apik would lose all chance of getting at 
the walrus. 

“Not always,” was the reply. “Suppose, 
Kood-shoo, we crossed the lead of water at this 
place. ’ ’ 

“Yes?” 

“And suppose the last piece of ice on which we 
stepped broke away from the rest of the floe. 
That is quite possible, Kood-shoo.” 


FIGHTING THE WALRUS 


93 


“Yes,” agreed the boy, “I suppose it is.” 

“If we had crossed that lead of water and the 
ice broke so that we could not get back, we would 
be in great danger. The sledges and the dogs, 
with our food, our bedding and everything we need 
would be on one side of the water, we should be 
on the other. How would we sleep ? ’ 9 

“We could build an iglooya until the lead froze 
up again,” Kood-shoo suggested. 

“We might,” Mirk-tu-shar agreed. “But we 
would have no lamp, Kood-shoo, nothing to warm 
up the iglooya, and we would have no caribou 
skins to sleep on. If we killed a walrus we would 
have food, and that would be all.” 

“And Ky-oah-pah would he left all alone!” 

“Yes, but he would not suffer,” the younger 
hunter replied. “He has the dogs and the food. 
He could go back to the village, but we might 
never see Itti-bloo again. It does not matter how 
one goes forward,” he repeated, “it is only neces- 
sary to have the road back sure.” 

Kood-shoo had been showing great impatience 
while the other spoke. 

“Mirk-tu-shar,” he said excitedly, the moment 
there was a pause, “see, Kah-mon-apik has 
stopped!” 


94 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


The big hunter had halted. The lead had nar- 
rowed to a lane of water about ten feet broad, 
which extended as far as one could see in the moon- 
light. The ice on either side was firm. Kah-mon- 
apik took his sharp-edged stone axe and detached 
a small cake of ice from the floe. Leaping on this, 
he took the harpoon stick and shoved the floating 
ice from the edge, the impetus sending the piece 
across to the other side. Then, pushing it oft with 
the harpoon stick, he returned it to the side from 
which it had come. It struck the main floe just 
where Mirk-tu-shar and Kood-shoo stood waiting. 

“Shall I stay here, while you go across V 9 the 
boy asked. 

The younger hunter shook his head. 

“ It is never wise to separate, ’ ’ he said. 6 ‘ Come 
with me. ’ ’ 

Kood-shoo jumped on the floating cake beside 
his companion and Mirk-tu-shar shoved it oft. In 
a second they were across. 

“Are you going to let go this ice oomiakr’ 
asked the boy. 

Kah-mon-apik shook his head. 

“It is necessary only to have the road back 
sure, ,, he answered, unconsciously repeating the 
words of the younger hunter. 


FIGHTING THE WALRUS 


95 


Mirk-tu-shar and Kah-mon-apik held the cake of 
ice fast to the other side of the main floe a few 
minutes, throwing some water on the crack. 
Even while they held it, a crust of ice began to 
form, and in ten minutes their “boat” was frozen 
fast to the floe. 

“Now!” declared Kood-shoo, “now for the 
walrus ! ’ ’ 

“You must be careful,” warned Kah-mon-apik. 
“The walrus is a mighty foe.” 

“Can’t I harpoon one, Kah-mon-apik?” 

“You may throw at a walrus that has already 
been harpooned, if I should get one,” Kah-mon- 
apik consented, “but you must not throw at any 
other one, nor may you throw first. Is it under- 
stood?” 

“All right, I promise,” replied the boy, only 
too glad to agree to anything, now that he was 
actually engaged upon the anticipated walrus hunt. 

Cautiously and steadily, the three crept up 
toward the dark masses in the ice. It was a long, 
slow crawl, for Kah-mon-apik did not wish to 
frighten the animals off the ice on which they were 
resting. 

Suddenly, when he was about twenty feet from 
a large walrus that lay sprawling on the ice, right 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


96 

at the water’s edge, Kah-mon-apik leaped to his 
feet and rushed. The big animal, startled at this 
fur-clad figure that seemed to spring at him out 
of the darkness, hesitated a moment before shuf- 
fling into the water, and this hesitation was his 
doom. 

Despite the darkness, the hunter drove his har- 
poon firm and true into the animal just at the 
point forward of the neck where the thick folds 
of the hide stop. An inch farther back and he 
would have struck the deep wrinkled hide that is 
proof almost against a bullet, an inch farther for- 
ward and he would have struck the skull. Kah- 
mon-apik had judged the point accurately and the 
walrus slumped into the water with a mortal 
wound. The float of a blown-up seal, like a great 
football, which was attached to the harpoon point, 
impeded the movements of the wounded walrus. 
Wary above his kind, the animal charged at the 
float and drove his tusks clear through it. 

“ Quick, Mirk-tu-shar, ’ 9 shouted Kah-mon-apik, 
but there was no need of the warning. 

The younger hunter rushed up with his harpoon 
as the walrus charged and, alert as he was, Kood- 
shoo was not a second behind him. As the walrus 
splashed into the water, the two harpoons, the long 


FIGHTING THE WALRUS 


97 


hunting spear of Mirk-tu-shar and the lighter 
weapon of Kood-shoo, both buried themselves in 
his hide, and two more floats danced on the black 
water. 

“Back, and take care!” cried Kah-mon-apik. 

Mirk-tu-shar jumped back from the edge of the 
ice, and Kood-shoo followed, wondering. Kah- 
mon-apik alone waited by the edge in the moon- 
light. Three of the other walrus gathered around 
their wounded comrade as though to help him to 
safety, but decided that they must have revenge 
instead. As with one accord, four of the huge 
beasts, led by the wounded bull, charged at the 
hunter on the ice, roaring and bellowing. 

“He’ll be killed!” cried Kood-too, when he saw 
Kah-mon-apik ’s danger. 

The second hunter, with another harpoon in 
hand, made no move, but watched the fight, strain- 
ing his eyes to see, for the moon gives only an un- 
certain light when a man’s life is in danger. 

One of the walrus, quicker in scrambling on 
the ice-floe than his wounded comrade, reared. 
He towered high above Kah-mon-apik, and 
plunged his tusks down at the big hunter, who 
seemed almost in the path of the blow. Had they 
struck him, that would have been the end, for the 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


98 

power of that downward blow would have killed 
an elephant, but Kah-mon-apik stepped aside eas- 
ily, the tusks missing him by a scant six inches. 
He ignored this latest assailant entirely, and 
planted another spear in the wounded bull. The 
water, churned by the herd, showed patches of 
foam, blue-white in the moonlight. 

“ Let’s harpoon this other one,” cried Kood- 
shoo, eager to get into the fight. 

Again the younger hunter held him back. 

“One walrus at a time is enough,” he said. 
“See, he strikes again, but Kah-mon-apik will let 
him go. * ’ 

The young aggressive walrus again reared, its 
black body vaguely silhouetted against the star- 
lit sky, and launched itself at Kah-mon-apik. 
Kood-shoo realized then that however formidable 
the beast appeared, and, for that matter, however 
dangerous he would be in the water, only alertness 
was needed to ensure safety on the ice. Again 
Kah-mon-apik side-stepped, but this time, to the 
side of the walrus instead of away from it. 

“Watch now,” said Mirk-tu-shar. 

As he spoke, Kah-mon-apik stooped suddenly 
and grasped the tusks of the fighting walrus. 


FIGHTING THE WALRUS 


99 


With a quick, powerful twist he turned the ani- 
mal’s head as though to twist it off, the short neck 
of the walrus giving the hunter a powerful lever- 
age. The beast tried to rise, but the hunter’s grip 
forced the neck over, and, poised on the extreme 
edge of the ice as it was, the clumsy animal over- 
balanced himself and fell into the water. 

4 4 Good! he will not return,” said Mirk-tu-shar. 

The younger hunter sprang forward, as he 
spoke, to confront another of the huge creatures 
that was just getting the leverage of his two-foot 
long tusks upon the floe and treated him in the 
same manner that Kah-mon-apik had done with 
the aggressive young bull. The noise of the roar- 
ing and barking was deafening and the huge forms 
threshing about in the water seemed magnified to 
twice their size in the murk of the Polar night. 

The old bull, who had been first wounded by 
Kah-mon-apik, tried to dive, but every time he 
did so, the large floats — made of seal-skin filled 
with air — brought him up to the top again. He 
charged at these again and again, but unsuccess- 
fully, the lines of twisted sinew by which they 
were attached to his body being so short that as 
he turned to thrust, they turned also. 


IOO 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


“He’s weakening! He’s weakening!” cried 
Kood-shoo. 

The plunges of the old bull grew shorter and 
less determined as the powerful harpoon thrust 
that Kah-mon-apik had made with his first fierce 
stroke began to take effect. Then he turned for 
one last effort and hurled himself straight at the 
point where Kah-mon-apik was standing. The 
hunter watched him, motionless. 

The long white tusks of the walrus, on which the 
moonlight gleamed, dug deep into the ice, not a 
yard from Kah-mon-apik ’s feet, and the huge bulk 
began to heave itself upward within arm’s-length 
of the intrepid Eskimo. 

Kood-shoo ran forward, for the only harpoon in 
the party that had not yet been cast was in his 
hands. As the boy came near, however, Kah-mon- 
apik motioned him back. 

“It is the end,” he said. 

Even as he spoke, the walrus placed its two fore 
flippers on the ice and lurched upwards and for- 
wards, with a desperate roar, but its strength 
failed. The huge body slipped helplessly into the 
water beside the floe and began to sink, prevented, 
however, by the attached floats. 

The instant that the old bull was dead, the rest 


FIGHTING THE WALRUS ioi 


of the herd vanished below the surface, and their 
roaring next was heard, a minute or two later, far 
down the lead of the water. 

‘ 4 There will be food in the village this dark- 
ness,” said Kah-mon-apik quietly. 

Mirk-tu-shar looked at the dead walrus and the 
harpoon wound that had brought its death. 

“ Ooh ! 9 ’ he said, ‘ ‘ big hunter ! ’ ’ 

Kah-mon-apik laughed and touched one of the 
floats with his harpoon stick. 

“ There is a little hunter, too,” he said; “his 
stroke must not be forgotten.” 

With the rest of the walrus herd removed as a 
source of danger, it took but a few minutes for 
Kah-mon-apik, with the aid of Mirk-tu-shar and 
Kood-shoo, to ferry the old bull to the other side 
of the lead. 

“Can you find your way to Ky-oah-pah alone?” 
Kah-mon-apik asked Kood-shoo, when they had 
crossed. 

The boy looked thoughtfully over the moonlit 
ice. 

“I think so,” he said. “We came up the lead 
of water about ten times as far as you can throw 
a harpoon,” he continued questioningly, “and 
then in that way,” he pointed in the direction from 


102 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


which they had come, 4 1 about twice as far? Is 
that right, Kah-mon-apik ? ’ ’ 

“Very nearly,’ ’ was the answer, “ but it is not 
quite as far as that. But, Kood-shoo, if you do 
not find Ky-oah-pah at once, after you have gone 
over the ice for a little while, turn right back to 
the lead of water and then come up it until you 
see us. Do not circle about on the ice ; you might 
get lost.” 

The injunction was hardly necessary, for, in 
Eskimo-land, every one knows well the danger of 
getting lost on the ice. Kood-shoo was very 
proud of this opportunity to be sent to find Ky- 
oah-pah, for he knew that Kah-mon-apik must 
trust him a great deal to let him go as far as a 
quarter of a mile by himself over the ice in winter. 

“I’ll go now, Kah-mon-apik,” he said, “and if I 
don’t find Ky-oah-pah at once, I’ll come straight 
back.” 

“Remember, Kood-shoo,” the hunter warned 
again, “be careful how you go. Do not wander 
from the straight line unless you are sure you see 
the sledges.” 

Kood-shoo started off. After he had walked a 
few steps he turned to look behind him. He had 
not gone more than twenty yards and yet the fig- 


FIGHTING THE WALRUS 


103 


ures of Kah-mon-apik and Mirk-tu-shar were 
scarcely visible in the darkness. The boy realized 
that he would need to keep his eyes sharply on the 
alert if he were to find the sledges. Still, he had 
been well trained. Going to and from the fish- 
holes near the iglooya had taught him the trick of 
watching for recognizable irregularities on the 
ice. So the boy advanced unhaltingly to the place 
where the walrus had first been seen and where 
Mirk-tu-shar had halted him. From that point he 
walked a little distance along the lead and then 
turned to look towards the land. 

There was a sense of unfamiliarity in the scene, 
and Kood-shoo’s heart sank. Could it be that he 
had been too excited to notice the path over which 
they had come and now was too puzzled to remem- 
ber? He walked along the lead a few yards far- 
ther, keeping his gaze landward. And, as he did 
so, a sudden intuition told him that he had gone 
too far. He followed his instinct, turned and 
walked back some little distance. Then, at a cer- 
tain point and angle, the formation seemed famil- 
iar. With a cry of joy, Kood-shoo started inland. 
He realized that he did indeed possess that Es- 
kimo instinct of direction without which he could 
not hope to be a great hunter. In a few minutes 


104 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


he saw something dark on the snow before him 
and was greeted with a long-drawn howl. 

“Good old Paudiak!” cried Kood-shoo, as he 
recognized the leader dog and raced on toward the 
sledges. 

4 4 Huk ! Huk ! Huk ! Ky-oah-pah ! ’ ’ he called. 
“We’ve got a walrus!” 

The angekok had already turned and was facing 
the boy as he approached. 

“Who killed him?” he asked in answer to the 
cry, “ Kah-mon-apik or Kood-shoo?” 

“I — I helped, Ky-oah-pah,” the boy declared; 
“I did, really. It was one of my floats that kept 
him from sinking. And — and he’s an awful big 
one ! ’ ’ 

The angekok, as the boy talked, began gather- 
ing together the dogs, which were harnessed and 
hitched fan-wise. In a few minutes after Kood- 
shoo ’s arrival, the teams were oft, Ky-oah-pah in 
the lead, with Kah-mon-apik ’s team, and Kood- 
shoo, proud as he could be, in the rear, driving the 
team belonging to Mirk-tu-shar. 

When they reached the place where the walrus 
had been hauled up on the ice, they found that 
Kah-mon-apik and the younger hunter had al- 
ready skinned and flensed the animal. The skin, 


FIGHTING THE WALRUS 105 

the blubber and the meat were piled on the sledges, 
an iglooya was built at the nearest point where the 
ice was safe, and after a good feast and a long 
rest the party started back to the village of Itti- 
bloo. There Kood-shoo was received as one who 
had won the right to be regarded a full-fledged 
hunter of the tribe, one who had helped to kill a 
big bull walrus. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE FIRE-STONES FROM THE SKY 

When Kood-shoo returned to the village after 
his walrus-hunt, he found himself a popular hero. 
Kah-mon-apik, with the generosity and good-feel- 
ing characteristic of the Eskimo, gave full credit 
to the boy for his aid in spearing the walrus, while 
Mirk-tu-shar graphically told the story of the cap- 
ture of the oog-sook by Kood-shoo and Ky-oah- 
pah. 

No one in Itti-bloo doubted for a moment that 
the boy was in league with Torn-uk-soak, but it 
was also evident that this alliance with the demons 
tended toward the benefit of the villagers. As the 
people of Itti-bloo paid little heed to good spirits, 
but readily propitiated the demons, Kood-shoo ’s 
suspected alliance gave him many opportunities 
denied to his boy friends. 

Formerly, Kood-shoo had been conscious of a 
slight avoidance. Since he had heard Ky-oah- 
pah’s story, however, the boy realized that this 
avoidance had been caused by the facts that he was 
a stranger and that he had first come into the 

io 6 


THE FIRE-STONES 


107 


knowledge of the villagers in such an unusual way. 
But, after the walrus hunt, this feeling passed 
away entirely, for the trip had been successful in 
the procuring of meat. Since meat is the stand- 
ard by which all things are judged in Eskimo- 
land, to the rest of the people Kood-shoo seemed 
a symbol of success. 

During the next hunting moon, therefore, there 
was no opposition to Kood-shoo ’s joining the main 
party, and he went out again on the winter ice 
with Kah-mon-apik, Mirk-tu-shar and Ky-oah- 
pah. In many ways this trip was a duplicate of 
the former one, save that the object of the expe- 
dition was not walrus, but seals. Paudiak’s keen 
nose guided the party on several occasions to 
blow-holes that were open under the snow, and 
Kah-mon-apik ’s experience with ice conditions 
kept the hunters always in the neighborhood of 
‘ ‘young” ice. Though weeks had passed, the sun 
had not yet appeared, the long Polar night still 
brooded over the frozen sea and snow-enshrouded 
land, and the blue-silver moon alone gave her cold 
light. 

Two sleeps before their proposed return to the 
village, while Kood-shoo was tucked under the 
caribou skins in an iglooya that the party had 


io8 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


built on the ice, there came a sudden loud howling 
of the dogs. Paudiak’s voice could be heard high 
above the rest. 

Kah-mon-apik, usually so fast asleep that noth- 
ing could wake him, jumped immediately into ac- 
tion. Even in his sleep he had recognized the pe- 
culiar bark of the dogs. 

“A nannook!” he cried. 

Mirk-tu-shar, less alert, rolled over heavily, but 
as soon as the word reached his consciousness, he, 
too, clambered down from the breck, put on his 
kapetah and grasped his spears. Kood-shoo had 
already slipped on his fox-skin coat, and was 
reaching down his mittens from the rack when 
Ky-oah-pah’s hand grasped him by the shoulder. 

“No, Kood-shoo, ” he said, “you do not go.” 

“Oh, Ky-oah-pah,” exclaimed the boy, “I’ve 
got to go!” 

“No,” the angekok replied. 

“Why not?” 

“The nannook is your brother,” came the an- 
swer. “You rode upon his back; you must not 
kill him now. ’ ’ 

“It isn’t the same nannook, Ky-oah-pah!” the 
boy protested. 

“All nannooks are brothers,” returned the an- 


THE FIRE-STONES 


109 

gekok, with Eskimo philosophy, “and you are 
their brother also.” 

“But I’m not a nannook!” declared Kood-shoo, 
little pleased at being regarded as a bear. 

“Perhaps, and perhaps not,” was the cautious 
answer. 

To the angekok, the idea that Kood-shoo might 
really be a bear in a boy’s form was not at all 
strange, for the Eskimos believe that the demons, 
and people in league with the demons, can take the 
form of either animals or human beings as they 
choose. 

Possibly, in spite of this odd warning, Kood- 
shoo would have run out of the tent, for even 
Ky-oah-pah’s training had not made him as obedi- 
ent as Eskimo boys generally were, but, by this 
time, the howling of the dogs had died away in 
the distance. They had been released by Kah- 
mon-apik to join in the chase of the great white 
bear, and Kood-shoo knew quite well that it would 
be suicidal for him to try and go out in the dark 
and cold alone. It was with a very disappointed 
air that the boy took off again his fox-skin coat, 
rolled himself up under the caribou skins and went 
to sleep. He was awakened a couple of hours 
later by the cry, 


IIO 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


“Huk! Huk! Huk!” 

There was triumph in the tones and Kood-shoo 
knew at once that the hunt had been successful. 
He wriggled down the passage from the iglooya 
as fast as he could go. 

Stretched out on the sledge was a huge polar 
bear, eight feet long, the beautiful white fur 
spotted with blood only in one or two places. 
What was more, the hunt had been so well man- 
aged that none of the dogs had been killed. One 
of them, indeed, had ventured too close to the bear 
and had been struck by a blow from its paw, but 
he was not seriously hurt. Kood-shoo knew well 
that the wounded dog would be healed in a couple 
of days. 

“Did the nannook run very far?” Kood-shoo 
asked. 

“No,” Kah-mon-apik answered, “Paudiak 
stopped him, every time he tried to run away. I 
had to spear him only twice . 9 9 

“Hasn’t he got thick fur!” the lad exclaimed, 
running his fingers through the snowy mass, which 
seemed, in the moonlight, even whiter than the 
snow. 

“It is a young nannook,” was the practical re- 
joinder. “The flesh will be good eating.” 


THE FIRE-STONES 


iii 


When meal-time came, however, Kood-shoo was 
again disappointed. Ky-oah-pah refused posi- 
tively to let him have any of the bear-steaks, on 
the ground that he might be eating his brother or 
his cousin. So Kood-shoo had to content himself 
with seal-meat while the hunters were feasting on 
the freshly killed bear. 

The boy was not to be daunted, however. By 
heroic exertions, he managed to keep awake until 
all his three companions had gone fast asleep. 
Then he unrolled himself from the caribou skins, 
took out his knife and reached across the little 
passage in the iglooya to where the juicy red meat 
lay invitingly. The story of his kinship with the 
nannook had little effect on Kood-shoo, for he was 
unlike the other Eskimo boys and thought for him- 
self. 

Seeing that he was unobserved, Kood-shoo cut 
off a piece of the meat and began to chew it. His 
teeth had not closed upon it a half dozen times 
when the angekok woke with a start. He seemed 
to know what had happened, for he said, sharply, 
to Kood-shoo, 

“ Are you eating the nannook V 9 

“Yes,” the boy replied defiantly. 

Even under his thick coating of grease and dirt, 


1 1 2 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


the angekok turned green. He jumped from the 
breck, and, without even waiting to put on his 
kapetah, seized a piece of meat, scrambled along 
the passage and threw it out of doors. 

“For Torn-uk-soak?” queried Kood-shoo, as the 
old man returned. 

The angekok sidled past him with a look of 
fear. Truth to tell, he expected some calamity to 
overtake them, or he doubted that some disaster 
might come to Kood-shoo. Perhaps he might turn 
into a bear before any one woke up! But when 
Kood-shoo finished chewing his piece of nannook- 
steak and turned over to sleep, the angekok’s fears 
grew less. As soon as the boy was deep in sleep, 
however, Ky-oah-pah wakened Kah-mon-apik and 
told him what he had seen. The hunter was less 
disturbed. 

“Kood-shoo has always done as he wanted,” 
was his practical reply, “and no harm has come. 
He is a friend of Torn-uk-soak, and I have often 
heard you say it is not wise to thwart the demons. 
Let him alone.” 

So Kood-shoo heard nothing further about the 
bear-steaks and took his portion at the next meal- 
time without remark. 

When they returned to Itti-bloo, the villagers 


THE FIRE-STONES 


113 

already were astir. Soon, very soon, the sun 
would begin to shine and then the whole character 
of village life would change. The stone igloos 
would be deserted, the tupiks or skin tents would 
be put up and the busy summer, with all its heavy 
work, would begin again. Everywhere in the vil- 
lage, the hunters were repairing their sledges for 
the spring hunt and getting their skin boats or 
kayaks ready for the water. There still remained 
two weeks of complete darkness, and when the sun 
did begin to shine, his rays would shoot across the 
horizon only for a short time each day. Yet, be- 
fore the sun came, Kood-shoo was to see a sight 
which would go far to determine his whole life’s 
future. 

About a week after his return, and when the 
Polar night still held the world in the dark grip, 
Kood-shoo went out on the ice with Ky-oah-pah, 
some distance away from the village, to bring 
back skins and meat that had been cached by a 
party of the village hunters in the vicinity of Cape 
York. They were driving Mirk-tu-shar’s team, 
when suddenly the dogs, which had been pulling 
well, began to behave restlessly. The leader sat 
down and howled. 

Kood-shoo, who was an expert with the long- 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


1 14 

lashed dog-whip, caught the rebel smartly on the 
flank, but the dog did not move. He put his nose 
further up into the air and howled again, then 
crouched, as in fear. 

Ky-oah-pah looked up and stood as though 
frozen stiff. Though the most courageous man in 
the village, his face turned pale with terror. He 
pointed to the sky. 

“ A star! A star has broken loose !” he cried, 
and threw himself on the ice, covering his face. 

4 ‘ Hide, Kood-shoo! Hide!” he groaned, “it is 
not good to look when the demons of the sky are 
fighting!” 

The boy glanced upwards. 

There, flung across the heavens, was an angry 
bar of light, seeming, in the darkness, like a gap- 
ing wound in the sky. High in the zenith the 
streak was silver, but nearer earth a tinge of 
blood crept into the flash and the lower end was 
marked by a ball of orange fire. 

Panic seized Kood-shoo. His knees trembled 
under him, and just for a fraction of a second he 
was conscious of a wild desire to fling himself 
down on the ice beside Ky-oah-pah. Then a sense 
of curiosity and defiance, that sense which set him 



Trail of a Shooting-Star. 


Note the thickening of the line at the lower end, showing the changes in 
the vaporization of the meteorite as it passes through the air. 

(A photograph, from Yerkes Observatory.) 



Fall of a Meteorite. 

Pencil drawing, showing the appearance of the largest meteorite, the 
fall of which was accurately observed, in Knyahinya, Hungary, 
Jan. 9, I860. (From “ Meteorites,” by O. C. Farrington). 





















































































THE FIRE-STONES 


“5 

apart from all the other boys in the village, stiff- 
ened his backbone and he looked up again. 

The silver streak was gone. The sky was split 
in two by that rift of orange light, lurid and 
threatening. 

“The sun is falling, Ky-oah-pah ! ’ ’ he cried. 

His heart surged up into his throat with a beat- 
ing that choked his breath, but he clenched his 
hands and stood, refusing to give way. 

A shrill roaring, faint at first, swung down from 
the heavens, where every star had been blotted out 
in the blinding glare. The mad howling of the 
dogs sounded thin and far away, overborne by the 
tumult of the celestial monster. 

The world of ice, never seen by the boy except 
blue-white under the moon or golden-white under 
the Arctic sun, now burned an angry red, and the 
shadow of Kood-shoo, thrown black and squat on 
the ice below him, was unrecognizable. The ball 
of fire grew larger, wilder, more threatening, as 
he gazed. 

Suddenly, a puff of vapor darted out from both 
sides of the fiery ball, the smoke curling cloud-like 
in the orange light, and with a crack like the 
breaking of an iceberg from its parent glacier, the 


ii6 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

star burst asunder. A vivid green flame shot out, 
so bright that it eclipsed the lurid glow for a 
single tragic second, and then went out, as sud- 
denly as it had come, leaving three balls of fire 
in the sky, where one had been before, now glow- 
ing with a duller red. These shrieked over the 
boy’s head and plunged into the snow-covered land 
mass less than two hundred yards from where he 
stood, with a series of crackling explosions and a 
long hiss as the snow and frost in the ground were 
melted by the meteorites from the sky . 1 

Scant time had Kood-shoo to speculate on the 
wonder, the whole of which had not taken ten sec- 
onds in the seeing, for with the jar to the ice 
caused by the impact of the fire-balls, the dogs 
leaped into their collars and began to run. The 
sledge was heavily loaded, which partly held the 
dogs back, but it took a thorough use of the whip 
to bring the frightened animals to their senses. A 
less adroit driver than Kood-shoo could never 
have held them in hand, and, if they had run away, 
the sledge would have been upset and broken, and, 
perhaps, the load of food lost. 

iThe Cape York meteorites’ fall was not recorded, this de- 
scription is from an eye-witness of the fall of the Knyahinya 
meteorite. 


THE FIRE-STONES 


ii 7 

As soon as the dog-team had been brought into 
subjection, Kood-shoo turned back for Ky-oah- 
pah. He found the angekok standing on his feet, 
indeed, but still stricken with fear. 

“You! You are here!” he said, shakenly. 

“Yes, why not?” queried Kood-shoo. 

“I thought the demons had come for you,” the 
old man answered. 

“What for?” 

“For eating the nannook,” came the unexpected 
reply. 

Kood-shoo had entirely forgotten his disobedi- 
ence to the taboo of Ky-oah-pah and the answer 
surprised him. 

“Oh, that!” he said. “I’ve never thought of 
it since.” 

The angekok looked at him wonderingly, but 
took up his place behind the dog-team and walked 
on in silence. 

“Let’s go and see the fallen sun, Ky-oah-pah,” 
suggested Kood-shoo. 

The angekok pretended not to hear. He walked 
on, without turning his head, only calling to the 
dogs to hurry. The boy followed, making up his 
mind, none the less, that he would visit that spot 
as soon as the summer sun had come, to find out 


ii8 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

if there was anything to be seen. He was sure 
that he knew exactly the small island on which 
the meteorites had fallen. 

On their return to the village, Kood-shoo and 
Ky-oah-pah found the place in confusion. Sev- 
eral of the Eskimos had seen the meteor and their 
terror had been equal to that of Ky-oah-pah. But 
when the angekok told the story of his nearness 
to the place where the heaven-born-stone fell and 
of Kood-shoo ’s eagerness to go right to the spot, 
the people of Itti-bloo felt comforted. It was but 
one more of the strange happenings that seemed to 
accompany Kood-shoo. No harm had come of it, 
and, perhaps, good might follow. 

The next day, to the southward, a faint golden 
glow appeared, the promise of the sun, and two 
weeks afterwards, the rim of the sun, greatly mag- 
nified by refraction, sent a shaft of yellow rays 
across the ice. It was greeted with joy by the 
Eskimos, for daylight meant the beginning of 
work, the work always being the same — the pro 1 
curing of meat. There is no other work in Es- 
kimo-land, no industry save hunting, in order to 
have skins to wear and food to eat. There are 
no herds to watch, no fields to till, and the only 
articles made are the kayaks and the weapons for 


THE FIRE-STONES 


1 19 

hunting, together with the needles for sewing 
skins together. 

As soon as the sun was well above the horizon, 
Kood-shoo persuaded Ky-oah-pah and Kah-mon- 
apik to accompany him to the little island south- 
east of Cape York, where he believed the three 
fire-balls had fallen. Both men were obviously 
afraid, but Ky-oah-pah did not want to show fear 
and Kah-mon-apik was always convinced that no 
harm could happen to him as long as he was in 
Kood-shoo ’s company. It was quite a long 
journey from Itti-bloo to Cape York but the party 
carried plenty of food on its sledges. Only two 
iglooyas were built on the trip, for the days were 
growing longer, and even in the middle of the 
night, daylight was faintly visible. 

When they reached the point where the meteor 
had been seen to fall from the sky, Ky-oah-pah 
turned the dog-team inland. There was a sharp 
scramble over the ice-foot and the three soon 
reached the shore of the island. It took but a 
very few minutes to find the place, for, there, stick- 
ing up above the snow, was a large rock, absolutely 
without a .fleck of white upon it, and black as no 
other rock on the Greenland coast that had ever 
been seen by the Eskimos. 


120 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


Kood-shoo went straight to it, but neither of his 
companions would go near. 

“Take care! It may still be burning !” Ky- 
oah-pah warned him. 

The boy cautiously put his hand upon the stone. 
It was not even warm. Moreover, to his surprise, 
he found that the stone had not sunk very far into 
the ground, in spite of the terrific force with which 
it had come down, neither was the snow and ice 
melted for any great distance around it, showing 
that the heat of the fire-ball had not been very 
great. 

“IPs not hot a bit,” Kood-shoo called out. 

Ky-oah-pah came forward gingerly and looked 
intently at the stone, which was pitted with inden- 
tations. The surface was covered with a gray- 
black coating, like cinder. The angekok rightly 
supposed this to be due to the burning of the fire- 
ball as it fell. He examined it with some care. 

“It is a fire-stone,” he said judiciously, after a 
time. “It ought to make fire. You try, Kood- 
shoo.” 

The boy looked at Ky-oah-pah in surprise. He 
did not see why the fact that the meteor had been 
burning should make it a fire-giving stone. Still, 
at the angekok ’s suggestion, he took from him the 


THE FIRE-STONES 


121 


piece of flint that the latter held out and struck 
the meteor, at first gently and then sharply. 
Nothing happened. 

6 1 The fire has left the outside,’ ’ declared Ky- 
oah-pah, “but there may be fire inside. Do you 
dare to break a piece off?” 

“Kah-mon-apik is stronger,” the boy replied. 

The hunter looked anxiously at Kood-shoo. 

“Will not the demons be angry if I break it?” 
he asked. 

The boy realized that he must live up to his 
reputation. 

“They will not be angry, Kah-mon-apik,” he de- 
clared solemnly. 

The hunter kicked away the snow from the peb- 
bles that lay on the beach. They were all frozen 
together, but by using his heel vigorously he loos- 
ened one of the smaller ones. Then, taking this 
as a hammer and a lever combined, he managed to 
pry away a large stone from its grip of frost. 

On one corner of the meteor there was a slender 
piece sticking upwards. It did not look difficult to 
break. Kah-mon-apik planted himself opposite 
this, and poised the large stone in his hand. 

“You are sure there are no demons inside?” 
he queried. 


122 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


Kood-shoo was not at all sure, but all his life he 
had been supposed to be in league with the demons 
and had never been harmed by them, so he was not 
afraid. 

“Nothing will hurt you,” he said. “Throw it, 
Kah-mon-apik!” 

The hunter threw back his shoulders and heaved 
the big stone clear at the projecting spur of the 
meteor. It struck it, exactly on the point, and 
with a sharp crack, the splinter of the fire-stone 
broke off. 

Ky-oah-pah and Kah-mon-apik started back, 
with evident dread that some evil might come, and 
Kood-shoo, himself, was more than a little fright- 
ened. In the moment’s pause, a hoarse cry 
shrilled overhead and a black bird flew past them. 
Ky-oah-pah dropped into a crouching position 
with his arms over his head, but Kah-mon-apik, 
whose hunting-trained eyes were quicker, saw at 
once that this was but a sea-bird. 

“A dovekie!” he cried, the hunting instinct 
strong in him, “all the birds will soon be here 
again. ’ ’ 

The relief was so sudden and so great that 
Kood-shoo laughed aloud, and Ky-oah-pah, 
straightening up, said without shame, 


THE FIRE-STONES 


123 

“ One fears many things when the eyes grow 
old.” 

Kood-shoo followed with his gaze the dovekie 
which was wheeling in the sky, the forerunner of 
the thousands of birds which soon would nest upon 
the shores, and then he stepped up again to the 
fire-ball. He took the piece of flint which had been 
given him by Ky-oah-pah and struck sharply upon 
the fractured surface. 

A spark flew out. 

‘ 4 There is fire!” cried Kah-mon-apik. “We 
need not go to the great cliff to get stones for mak- 
ing fire. Let us have more ! ’ 9 

He picked up the stone again and hurled it at the 
rock. It would not break. Again and again he 
threw the pebble with all his strength, until, at 
last, the stone he threw splintered into pieces 
against the meteor. Kah-mon-apik loosened an- 
other stone from the frost-gripped beach and used 
it for a hammer also, but it met the same fate. 
Then Ky-oah-pah, the wise man, who had been 
watching closely, interposed. 

“The fire-stone is much harder than the stone 
we use for weapons,” he said. “Would not our 
knives be better, Kah-mon-apik, if we made them 
of this fire-stone?” 


124 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


Kah-mon-apik looked at him a moment, then 
nodded understanding^. 

“They would,” he said. “We must take some 
pieces home.” 

Again and again he sought stones for hammers 
which would be strong enough to break the stone 
that had come from the sky, but all proved too 
brittle. After an hour ’s labor, Kah-mon-apik had 
only broken off two small splinters, and these 
were the only two projecting pieces of the rock. 
No impression whatever had been made on the 
body of the fire-stone. 

“Didn’t you see three stones falling?” Kood- 
shoo asked Ky-oah-pah. 

“I did not look,” the angekok answered. “No- 
body saw them but you.” 

“I know I saw three,” the boy declared, “I’m 
going to look for the others.” 

He wandered off along the beach and presently 
the angekok heard a shout. 

“Here! Come here! I’ve found another!” 

Ky-oah-pah hurried up to where the boy was 
standing and saw, lightly embedded in the frozen 
beach, another meteorite, looking exactly like the 
one on which Kah-mon-apik had been hammering, 


THE FIRE-STONES 


125 

but a great deal smaller. He looked at it, and then 
at the larger meteorite. 

“That other is a woman with a baby in her 
amaut,” the angekok commented, little thinking 
that, as he said so, he was but quoting the Ancient 
Greeks who worshiped, under the name of “Diana 
of the Ephesians,” a meteorite that had fallen 
from the sky and, which they believed, possessed 
a feminine shape. 

“It does look a little like a woman,” agreed 
Kood-shoo. 

“It is the Woman,” the angekok declared 
gravely, “and this,” he added, pointing to the 
meteorite which Kood-shoo was kicking idly with 
his foot, “this is her dog, still fast asleep.” 

It was rather a stretch of the imagination to 
see the shape of a dog in the irregular mass of 
iron that lay half buried in the snow and stones of 
the beach, but if there was a Woman and a Baby, 
surely there ought to be a Dog! The boy knew 
well that Ky-oah-palTs fertile fancy was weaving 
a story to explain how the Woman, with her Baby 
on her shoulder and her Dog at her feet, had fallen 
from the sky. 

They returned to Kah-mon-apik, who was still 


126 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

industriously working. He looked up as they 
came near. 

“Let us try with these pieces ,’ 9 he said. “If, 
indeed, they will make knives, then many of us will 
come and break the heaven-horn-stone. This is 
enough to begin. ’ ’ 

Ky-oah-pah agreed readily, for he was not com- 
fortable in his heart over Kah-mon-apik’s work, 
especially since he had seen a fancied resemblance 
to a Woman and her Dog. Kood-shoo, for his 
part, had satisfied his curiosity and the three re- 
turned swiftly to the village. 

There was great excitement among the people 
of Itti-bloo when they arrived safely, for many 
had been the doubts expressed that they would 
not return alive after having dared the vengeance 
of the demons. When, however, they not only re- 
turned in safety, but actually brought with them 
pieces of the stone that had fallen from the sky, 
then wonder gave place to awed amazement. 
Moreover, when it was shown that sparks could 
actually be drawn from the pieces which Kah-mon- 
apik had brought home with him, Kood-shoo’s 
fame as a wonder-worker grew so great as almost 
to overtop that of Ky-oah-pah himself. 

A couple of weeks later, the howling of all the 


THE FIRE-STONES 


127 


dogs in the village greeted the appearance of a 
stranger from the village of Netlik. This was Ok- 
pnd-ding-wah, who had been brought up as a boy in 
the village of Itti-bloo, but whose family had 
moved to the northward. He recognized Kood- 
shoo, for, though the boy did not know it, the story 
of his arrival on the North Water was a familiar 
tale to all the Smith Sound Eskimo, and Ok-pud- 
ding-wah had lived with the Itti-bloo group until 
he was fourteen years old. 

On seeing the boy, he stopped his sledge. 

“Is Ky-oah-pah on his travels V 9 he asked, for 
there had been no communication between the vil- 
lagers during the winter, and the visitor wanted 
information concerning the angekok. 

“No, he is in the igloo,” the boy responded. 

“And In-nook-shee-aM” 

“She is in the igloo, also,” Kood-shoo, for he 
remembered that Ok-pud-ding-wah had always 
been very fond of In-nook-shee-ah, the eldest of 
the angekok ’s daughters, who was famous for her 
skill in tanning skins. 

* ‘ I will drive on , 9 9 the stranger said, and calling 
to his dogs, the team whirled along the beach to the 
angekok ’s igloo. 

Kood-shoo followed as fast as he could. He 


128 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


understood the romance of Ok-pud-ding-wah ’s 
visit, because the young fellow was dressed in a 
brand-new suit of fox-skins and his equipment for 
hunting was the finest that the lad had ever seen. 
By the time the boy reached the igloo, it was evi- 
dent that all the marriage arrangements had been 
made, for In-nook-shee-ah was busily fingering the 
skins on the sledge with an air of possession. 

Ok-pud-ding-wah, who was alert and excited, 
paid no further heed to his bride. Instead, Kood- 
shoo found him sitting outside Kah-mon-apik’s 
hut, watching intently the “big hunter” as, with 
a piece of trap-rock, he laboriously ground down 
one of the two chunks which had been broken off 
from the meteorite. The trap-rock wore away 
much faster than the fire-stone, so fast, indeed, 
that it seemed as though little impression were 
being made on the harder material, but in the two 
weeks of constant labor Kah-mon-apik had already 
ground down the meteoritic iron to the shape of a 
chisel on one side. It would take at least another 
two weeks of constant work to give the chip a sim- 
ilar opposing edge, but there was no denying that 
the tool, when completed, would be more service- 
able than anything Kah-mon-apik possessed, ex- 
cept the white man’s knife. 


THE FIRE-STONES 


129 


“It was you who found the heaven-born-stone V ’ 
Ok-pud-ding-wah asked of Kood-shoo, as soon as 
the boy came within hearing. 

“I saw it fall, ,, answered the lad. 

“You went with Ky-oah-pah and Kah-mon-apik 
to break it?” 

“I went to find it,” was the reply. “Ky-oah- 
pah found out that it was a fire-making stone and 
Kah-mon-apik is trying to make a chopping knife 
of it.” 

“Will you show me where it is?” the visitor 
asked. “Kah-mon-apik says that no one will go 
there without you. He says that the heaven-born- 
stones are under your keeping and that only you 
can keep the demons away. ’ ’ 

“I’ll show you where the stones are, if you 
like,” answered Kood-shoo, frowning, for he was 
not too well pleased to find out that the story of 
his supposed connection with the demons had trav- 
eled to other villages. 

“Will you go now?” queried Ok-pud-ding-wah, 
jumping up, quite energetically for an Eskimo. 

“Yes, I’ll go now, if you want me to,” the lad 
agreed willingly, “only IVe got to have something 
to eat first.” 

“IVe brought some caribou flesh for a feast,” 


130 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


Ok-pud-ding-wah announced. u We will feast first 
and take a sleep and then you will guide me to the 
heaven-born-stones. ’ ’ 

The whole village gathered to the feast, which 
already was in course of preparation. There was 
plenty of meat in Itti-bloo, thanks largely to the 
skill of Kah-mon-apik, and, as the weather had 
settled into a mild warmth as soon as the sun ap- 
peared, the prospects were good for a favorable 
hunting summer. There were all sorts of dainties 
especially the insides of seals and the half-digested 
shell-fish from a walrus’ stomach, boiled with fish- 
oil and blubber, but the caribou venison was the 
chiefest treat. 

When every one had eaten until he could hold 
no more, and when the refuse had been given to 
the dogs, every man, woman, and child in Itti-bloo 
went to sleep, many of them in the open, because 
they were too full to move. Fortunately, there 
was just enough mildness in the air to prevent 
these gluttons being frozen to death. 

Many hours later, the feasters began to awaken. 
Ok-pud-ding-wah was among the first of them. 
He looked around for his bride, In-nook-shee-ah, 
but she had gone into her father’s igloo to sleep. 

The stranger aroused Kood-shoo, and the boy, 


THE FIRE-STONES 


131 

sleepily rubbing his eyes, (same out and joined his 
visitor. He helped Ok-pud-ding-wah to harness 
up his dogs, a frisky team, showier than that of 
Kah-mon-apik ’s, but not as heavy, and the two 
started out for Cape York. With the freshly-fed 
dogs ahead of them and daylight to show the way 
the trip was made quickly. 

Ok-pud-ding-wah was more venturesome in char- 
acter than most of the Itti-bloo villagers, and 
though when he reached the meteorite, it was evi- 
dent that he was afraid, yet the knowledge that 
Kood-shoo was beside him stimulated him to an ap- 
pearance of bravery. 

“See, Ok-pud-ding-wah,” the boy said, “here 
is where Kah-mon-apik broke off the pieces.’ ’ 

The young hunter looked at the meteorite and 
noted the piles of broken pebbles at its base, mark- 
ing the place where Kah-mon-apik had spent all 
his efforts in trying to break the stone. 

“It must be very hard, Kood-shoo,” he said. 

The boy nodded. 

“Are the other heaven-born-stones smaller!” he 
asked. 

“Much smaller,” the boy answered, and he led 
the way to the Dog. “There’s a third one some- 
where,” he added, “but I haven’t found it yet.” 


132 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


Ok-pud-ding-wah looked at them thoughtfully 
for a moment, then turned to Kood-shoo. 

“Will you give permission for the Innuit of 
Netlik to take away part of the stones ?” he asked. 

“Why not?” propounded Kood-shoo. “They 
don’t belong to me, I only found them.” 

“It was to you the heaven-born-stones came,” 
the young hunter answered , i 1 and they are in your 
keeping. But if it is right for Kah-mon-apik to 
use them, it cannot be wrong for me.” 

“I’m perfectly willing,” the boy agreed, “but 
I don’t see how you are going to get any of them 
to Netlik. Even the Dog is too heavy to put on a 
sledge. ’ ’ 

“It’s not so very large,” protested Ok-pud-ding- 
wah. 

“Did you feel the weight of that small piece 
that Kah-mon-apik was chipping?” retorted the 

lad. 

“It was very heavy,” the other agreed. Then 
he walked over to the smaller of the two 
meteorites. 

“Can I touch it?” he asked. 

“You can do anything you like with it,” Kood- 
shoo agreed. 

Ok-pud-ding-wah stooped down and put his 


THE FIRE-STONES 


133 


whole strength into a heave. The stone did not 
lift. It did not even budge. The young hunter 
strained and strained his utmost but it was of no 
use. When he desisted, he was panting with his 
exertions, but the meteorite had not moved. He 
could not turn it over, try as he would. 

“You are right, Kood-shoo,” he said. “We 
could not put it on a sledge . 9 9 

The young hunter then went to the larger 
meteorite and examined it closely. It was evi- 
dent that there was something in his mind. 
Finally he turned to the boy with a shame-faced 
air. 

‘ ‘ Do you think we could break off a piece of this 
one?” he asked. 

‘ ‘ Break it all up if you want to, ’ ’ answered the 
lad, “but you will find it hard to chip.” 

“It would be easy to break oft the top,” Ok- 
pud-ding-wah said in an awed tone. It was easy 
to see his ideas had been modernized by his con- 
tact with the white men the year before, who had 
spent a longer time at Netlik than at Itti-bloo. 

Kood-shoo was not superstitious, at least, not 
as superstitious as the other Eskimos, but this sug- 
gestion was a little daring. True, the only reason 
for supposing the meteorite to be a Woman was 


134 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


the fact that Ky-oah-pah had detected a resem- 
blance in the form of the stone to a woman, cov- 
ered with her hood and with her baby on her shoul- 
der. Nevertheless, the idea had stuck. 

“You mean to break off the Woman’s head?” 
said the boy. 

Ok-pud-ding-wah looked away, he did not want 
to meet Kood-shoo’s eye. But he squirmed un- 
easily, just the same. 

For a second the boy hesitated, and then the 
thought surged over him that the stranger was 
showing a less superstitious spirit than himself. 
He shook himself together. 

“I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t,” he 
said hastily. “But do you think you can do it?” 

“It will take a long time,” the young hunter an- 
swered, “but if it will make weapons as good as 
the white man’s knife that Kah-mon-apik owns, it 
is worth spending a whole sunshine-time to get it. ’ ’ 

“When will you do it?” queried the boy. 

“At once,” Ok-pud-ding-wah answered. “I 
will go to Netlik with In-nook-shee-ah and, after a 
hunt, I will return with several sledges. We will 
put up our tupiks here on the beach and take away 
the head.” 

“How will the people of Netlik know that the 


THE FIRE-STONES 


J 3S 

heaven-born-stone will make weapons ?” queried 
Kood-shoo. 

Ok-pud-ding-wak held out his finger, from which 
he had removed his mitten, a few minutes before, 
and showed a slight cut on his finger which was 
bleeding profusely. 

“How did you do that?” asked the boy. 

For reply the young hunter showed in his other 
hand a small sliver of the meteorite, which had 
been shattered by some of Kah-mon-apik’s heavy 
battering two weeks before and which he had 
picked up on the beach. It was as sharp as a 
needle. 

“No bone can make a hole like that,” he said, 
“I just touched my finger with it. It is very 
sharp.” 

Kood-shoo saw at once how this single sliver of 
the meteoritic iron would excite the people of Net- 
lik. A point as sharp as this would save much 
time and labor in the sewing of heavy hides, such 
as walrus or oog-sook. The bone needles, which 
were all that the Eskimos possessed, can not be 
filed too sharp, or they break. All the sewing is 
through thick skins and every place through which 
a needle has to pass has to be chewed to make it 
soft. A seam takes a week to make. 


136 the polar hunters 

The one small sliver from the meteorite, now 
in Ok-pud-ding- wall’s hand, would make him rich, 
and if he gave it to In-nook-shee-ah, as he un- 
doubtedly would, she would be the envy of every 
other woman in the village. She would possess 
the only sharp needle in the north. The boy quite 
understood the young fellow’s eagerness to return 
to Itti-bloo and show this treasure to his bride. 
She would consider him a very brave and very im- 
portant hunter. 

When they reached the village, Kood-shoo told 
Ky-oah-pah the plan that Ok-pud-ding-wah had 
suggested to him. The old man shook his head 
gravely, but did not seem personally concerned. 

“If the people of Netlik wish to make the 
demons of the sky angry,” he said, “they are fool- 
ish. It will be good for Itti-bloo. The demons 
will be busy and will forget what Kah-mon-apik 
has done. The big evil will hide the small one.” 

Still, the boy noticed that although Ok-pud-ding- 
wah had been in and out of Ky-oah-pah ’s igloo 
often during the time before the feast, after the re- 
turn of the young hunter from the meteorites, the 
old angekok would not allow him under his roof. 
It was evident that he feared the vengeance of the 
demons. 


THE FIRE-STONES 


137 


In less than two weeks Ok-pud-ding-wah re- 
turned, leading a party of twenty Eskimos from 
Netlik. They came prepared for a long stay, with 
fifteen sledges, loaded with household equipment, 
skins, weapons and everything needful. A big 
feast was held, as before. The former feast had 
been sumptuous enough, but it was far outshone 
by this banquet. The Eskimo regards quantity 
rather than quality, and Kood-shoo figured that, 
on an average, each person at the feast ate the 
equivalent of half a seal, or thirty to fifty pounds 
of meat at a single sitting. Kood-shoo himself 
stuffed until it was a painful exertion to move, but 
some of the feasters, the women especially, gorged 
until their eyes bulged out from repletion. It was 
warmer weather now, and most of the feasters 
rolled over where they sat and slept in their furs 
on the frozen beach until enough of the meat 
and blubber had digested to enable them to move. 

After a while the visitors recovered from their 
banquet sufficiently to be ready to travel. The 
sledges were loaded with the remainder of the 
food, the dogs harnessed anew and they started for 
Cape York. 

As he had promised, Kood-shoo went with them 
and took up his quarters in the tupik that was 


138 the polar hunters 

built by Ok-pud-ding-wah for In-nook-sliee-ah and 
himself. Being still early in the summer, this 
tupik was midway between an iglooya and a tent 
in its construction, its sides being built of snow 
blocks and its roof of caribou deer skins. These 
were the hides of the wild caribou, of course, from 
the deer-grazing plateau of Kan-gerd-look-soak, 
for the Smith Sound Eskimo do not possess do- 
mesticated reindeer. 

Sip-su, the angekok of Netlik, had accompanied 
the party and he did everything he could to hinder 
the work. Nevertheless, Ok-pud-ding-wah took 
the leadership, and, having received permission to 
proceed from Kood-shoo, he dared the vengeance 
of the demons so lavishly promised by the ange- 
kok of Netlik. 

No sooner had the group put up their tupiks than 
Ok-pud-ding-wah set to work. The Eskimo had 
brought many of their best tools, made from trap- 
rock, and commenced to try and chip away that 
portion of the stone which joined the head of the 
Woman to the body. 

“Do you think you’re going to be able to break 
it at all?” Kood-shoo asked, as Ok-pud-ding-wah 
and the men with him prepared to hack at the 
stone. 



Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History. 

Eskimo Spring Hunting Hut. 

Tupik or tent roof of caribou skins, with sides made of snowblocks. 
Note absence of entrance tunnel. 



Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History. 


Building an Iglooya. 

Construction of a snow house on sea ice during the winter; the igloos, 
or permanent huts on land, occupied at irregular intervals 
by any one who desires to take possession, are 
made of stone, banked with snow. 




THE FIRE-STONES 


*39 


4 4 We will break it,” the young hunter replied, 
“we have brought hard stones here to do it with.” 

He stepped up to the meteorite and then hesi- 
tated. 

4 4 Will you smash the first piece!” he pleaded. 

Kood-shoo realized that even yet Ok-pud-ding- 
wah wanted to clear himself from the responsi- 
bility. The boy would have preferred not to take 
the initiative, but as he had begun, he would have 
to continue. 

There was one thin sheet of the iron-stone, which 
Ky-oah-pah had described as the hood covering 
the Woman’s head. The boy grasped the strong- 
est of the weapons brought by the people of Netlik 
and struck with all his might. The stone weapon 
rebounded with a dull clang. Again and again 
Kood-shoo struck, until he was perspiring all over 
with the effort, and, at last, a small piece of the 
iron, about the size of one joint of his little finger, 
flew off. The destruction of the Woman was be- 
gun. 

There was a gasp of expectation among the 
Eskimo assembled and half of them looked up- 
wards to the sky as though expecting the demons 
to come on them in force. The sky remained 
cloudless and nothing could be heard save the 


140 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


shrill screaming of the sea-birds, which, by now, 
had arrived in countless thousands. 

Ok-pud-ding-wah took heart, and snatching the 
heavy trap-rock hammer from Kood-shoo’s hand, 
he struck with all his might at the “head” of the 
Woman. And, with the blow, his weapon flew into 
a thousand splinters. 

Sip-su, the angekok, laughed hoarsely. 

“You will break every tool you own,” he said, 
1 1 and get nothing in return. I will stay no longer. 
I leave you to your fate. I warn you that the 
demons of the sky will take their vengeance and 
the head of the Woman will never see Netlih 
village . 1 ’ 

Ok-pud-ding-wah, who was largely a scoffer of 
Sip-su’s power in his native village, motioned him 
away. 

“You can go,” he said, “this is no place for 
those who are afraid.” 

Sip-su scowled around at the people who sur- 
rounded him. 

“It has come to pass that a man goes on his 
travels,” he said in farewell, scorning further 
argument. 

He whipped his dogs and struck off down the 
beach slope to the ice. 


THE FIRE-STONES 


141 


Not until lie was gone did Kood-shoo remember 
the vision of Ky-oah-pah, which he had told in the 
iglooya on the ice, during the hunting months be- 
fore. 

‘ ‘ Ok-pud-ding-wah, ’ ’ he said, “months ago Ky- 
oah-pah said the same thing that Sip-su has just 
said.” 

“Is it true, do you think?” was the anxious 
query. 

“I don’t know,” Kood-shoo replied, “Ky-oah- 
pah is very wise . 9 9 

“Will you promise to stay with me for as many 
sleeps as I have fingers?” the younger hunter 
pleaded. 

“Yes,” the boy answered, “and I’ll stay longer, 
if you like, on the condition that you let me go on 
the hunt with you and take one-half of all the meat 
I catch to Ky-oah-pah. He has always been very 
good to me.” 

“It is agreed,” the young hunter answered. 
“If you will stay, I care nothing for the angekok 
of Netlik or the angekok of Itti-bloo.” 

And, with the word, he turned back to his work 
again. 

After the next sleep, three of the Netlik families, 
eleven persons in all, told Ok-pud-ding-wah that 


142 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


they were afraid and were going back to their 
village, but the other nine men agreed to stay. 
Like their leader, they had faith in Kood-shoo, and 
the power of the angekok had been weakened 
among them by the visits of the white men the 
year before. 

Hour after hour, day after day, the Eskimo 
hammered at the iron block. Their weapons, as 
the angekok had foretold, were all broken, yet they 
kept on. They gathered stones from the beach 
and went on long journeys to the base of the 
glaciers to get harder pieces of trap-rock. Still, 
day by day, the pile of broken stones around the 
base of the meteorite grew and the head of the 
Woman remained unshattered. Only, each day, a 
little chip would fly off. After two weeks of con- 
tinuous hammering, there was no evidence of the 
labor that had been expended on the task save a 
notch, two inches deep, in what, according to Ky- 
oah-pah’s description, would have been the neck 
of the figure. 

Kood-shoo returned to the village, having 
stayed longer than he promised, but Ok-pud-ding- 
wah kept working on. Native obstinacy, added to 
a perception of the value of the iron, kept the 
young hunter true to his purpose. In-nook- 


THE FIRE-STONES 


H3 


shee-ah tried to persuade him to give up the plan 
and to leave, but the Netlik leader was firm. See- 
ing him so steadfast, the other nine men remained. 
Hour after hour, all day and all night long, some 
men working while the others slept, the hammering 
continued. Steadily the notch grew deeper. The 
arms of the Eskimo were stiff, most of them had 
suffered injuries as the stones with which they 
struck splintered in their hands, but with the 
dogged persistence of a primitive people, they 
continued without ceasing. 

From time to time some of the men would go 
off hunting, returning with food for the others who 
had labored during their absence. When the food 
supply ran short, the other hunters would go in 
turn. Nothing was allowed to interfere with the 
work, which went relentlessly on. 

Twice Kood-shoo came to visit them, each time 
repeating his warning that it would be wiser for 
them to stop, and on the second visit he brought 
Ky-oah-pah, who repeated to Ok-pud-ding-wah the 
story of his vision out on the Great Ice. The 
young hunter listened to the story with intense in- 
terest, and for answer, strode forward to the block 
and took his turn in chipping. The sun was rising 
high in the sky and the ice was growing thin. As 


i 4 4 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


Kood-shoo and Ky-oah-pah returned, their sledge 
ran through pools of water on the ice 

“It will be hard for Ok-pud-ding-wah to go 
back to Netlik,” said Ky-oah-pah as the sledge 
stopped at the village of Itti-bloo. “The ice 
grows thin. ’ ’ 

“He’ll never go back until he has the Head, ,, 
said Kood-shoo. “It ought not to take long now, 
there is very little left now to chip away. ” 

“The eyes of my breath,” said the angekok, 
‘ ‘ showed me that Ok-pud-ding-wah will never take 
the block back to Netlik.” 

“I believe he will, Ky-oah-pah, just the same,” 
Kood-shoo declared. “He certainly deserves to 
get it. He ’s worked for it all spring. ’ ’ 

“We shall know in a few sleeps,” the angekok 
replied. “He must go soon or he cannot cross 
the ice to Netlik.” 

The end came quicker than Ky-oah-pah ex- 
pected. Two days later, Nook-tal, one of the 
younger Eskimo who was with Ok-pud-ding-wah, 
came driving into Itti-bloo, all agog with excite- 
ment. 

“It is done ! It is done ! ” he cried. 1 ‘ The Head 
is off!” 

Kood-shoo ran forward to meet him. 


THE FIRE-STONES 


H5 


“I did it!” the other continued. “ It was my 
blow which struck off the Head. Come, come 
quickly ! Ok-pud-ding-wah said you must be there 
when we move it. ’ ’ 

Kood-shoo turned to the angekok. 

“I suppose I had better go,” he said. 

“ You must go,” the old man replied. 

The trail was good, and, for a short distance, the 
boy rode on the sledge. The dogs had been well 
fed and though the ice was soft, not many hours 
passed before Kood-shoo found himself at the 
camp. All the tupiks had been taken down, most 
of the sledges were packed, and Ok-pud-ding-wah^ 
sledge, the largest of the lot, was drawn up near 
the meteorite. 

The young hunter greeted the lad warmly. 
Everything was ready for loading the Head, which 
weighed a quarter of a ton, upon the sledge. 
Using the shoulder-blade of a whale as an inclined 
plane and sharpened whale ribs for levers, the 
piece of iron was loaded on the sledge. Thus 
loaded, it was not too heavy a pull for a double 
team of dogs, and the sledge was hauled down the 
beach and out on the ice amid the shouts of the 
Eskimo. 

The leader of the Netlik party was so proud over 


146 the polar hunters 

his success that he was like a child for joy, but 
Kood-shoo felt a presentiment of trouble. The 
other sledges, containing the rest of the Eskimo, 
gradually drew ahead, leaving Ok-pud-ding-wah 
and Kood-shoo with the heavily loaded sledge in 
the rear. The day was warm, and the pools of 
water on the surface of the ice were deeper than 
when Kood-shoo had passed over them a couple of 
hours before. The sun shone hotly, and shone, of 
course, day and night uninterruptedly. 

“The ice is bad, Ok-pud-ding-wah,” warned 
Kood-shoo. “We had better travel on the beach. ’ 9 

“There is no snow on the beach,’ ’ the young 
hunter answered, “the dogs could not pull the 
load . 9 9 

This was so true that Kood-shoo forbore to an- 
swer. But as they drew near to the rounding of 
the cape, an especially bad stretch of ice appeared 
in front of them. 

“Leave the Head here till the winter, when the 
ice is strong again,” Kood-shoo urged. 

This, Ok-pud-ding-wah would not do. Triumph 
was in his grasp and he wanted to taste the joy of 
it by riding into the village full tilt, displaying 
his prowess to Ky-oah-pah and the rest of the 
scoffers. 


THE FIRE-STONES 


H7 

One of the dogs whined, and at the same instant, 
by some instinct of the origin of which he was 
unconscious, Kood-shoo stretched out his arm 
and sharply plucked Ok-pud-ding-wah hack. The 
whip dropped from the young hunter’s hand and 
he almost fell sprawling on the ice. 

As he turned, and as Kood-shoo lamely sought 
in his mind for some explanation as to why he had 
done this thing, the dogs leaped forward fren- 
ziedly. There was a swirl in the couple of inches 
of water that lay atop of the ice, and through which 
they were traveling, and then, under their feet, 
the two men felt the ice sway downwards. The 
water bubbled around them, rising almost to their 
knees. 

Kood-shoo tried to call to the dogs, but the cry 
stuck fast in his throat. His eyes were riveted on 
the sledge, now sunk so far that the water was 
washing around the meteorite, and which was ad- 
vancing by little jerks as the frightened dogs tried 
to make their way over the breaking and sinking 
ice. 

Then, slowly, and in silence broken only by the 
cracking of the ice, the sledge turned sidewise, and 
the meteorite plunged into the waters of Melville 
Bay. With the huge weight removed, the dogs 


148 the polar hunters 

still struggled on, and, showing unexpected 
strength and courage, half swam, half galloped 
over the sinking ice and drew the empty sledge to 
safety on the firm ice beyond. 

Ok-pud-ding-wah said never a word. He walked 
to the shore, followed by Kood-shoo, and, further 
on, caught up with the dog-team. So, still silent, 
he guided the team into Itti-bloo where all the 
people were gathered on the beach, ready to wel- 
come his triumph. Not a word was said as the 
empty sledge drew up, until Ok-pud-ding-wah, 
turning to Ky-oah-pah, said, in a manner that 
showed he had returned in full to the traditions 
of his forefathers, 

4 4 The demons of the sea have taken the head of 
the Woman to return it to the demons of the sky.” 


CHAPTER V 


THE COMING OF THE WHITE MEN 

The sinking of the meteorite was a sore blow to 
the natives of Netlik, for they had worked hard, 
terribly hard, but the fact that Ok-pud-ding-wah 
had been saved, and especially that all the sledge- 
dogs had escaped, was regarded by the Eskimo as 
entirely due to the good influence of Kood-shoo. 
Had he not been there, they argued, Ok-pud-ding- 
wah would have found his grave in the icy waters 
of Melville Bay, together with the iron-stone head 
of the Woman he had tried so hard to secure. 

By force of circumstances, therefore, the boy’s 
reputation for wisdom and success grew, and, as 
a result, every hunting expedition that set out was 
eager to have him as a member. Kood-shoo was 
equally ready to learn and quick to grasp every 
opportunity given. It followed, that when his 
fellow-Eskimo of the same age were still inex- 
perienced and little trusted by their elders, Kood- 
shoo was beginning to be reckoned as one of the 
149 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


150 

most promising young hunters of the tribe. He 
took his part in the big walrus-hunt of the spring 
at Pituarvik, to which the whole Smith Sound tribe 
gathered. The hunt proved extremely successful, 
over a hundred walrus being killed and their blub- 
ber rendered for oil. Several narwhals were cap- 
tured, while thirty large oog-sook (bearded seals) 
added to the store of food, which was cached in 
anticipation of the autumn, the lean time of the 
year to the Eskimo. 

At the close of the walrus-hunt and when they 
were still staying at Pituarvik, though some of 
the families already had gone, Kah-mon-apik un- 
dertook to make good an old promise to teach 
Kood-shoo how to make a bow and arrows. There 
were only three bows in the possession of the tribe. 
All were of the pattern that had been brought 
to the Smith Sound people from the Ellesmere 
Land Eskimo by Ito-kirs-suk, Kah-mon-apik^ 
father, when he crossed Smith Sound fifty years 
before. Prior to that time, the Smith Sound 
Eskimo had never seen a bow and arrow. 

Kood-shoo was returning to the igloo in Pit- 
uarvik, from a seal-hole that he had been watch- 
ing, when he saw Kah-mon-apik in the distance 
and noted the string of six kittiwakes and two 


COMING OF THE WHITE MEN 151 

burgomaster gulls that the hunter was carrying. 
The boy ran to meet him. 

“I wish I had a bow and arrows,” he said, “to 
shoot birds the way you do! You’ve always 
promised to make me a bow, Kah-mon-apik, ” he 
continued reproachfully. “Can’t you make me 
one now?” 

The hunter shook his head. 

“I have not said that I would make you a bow,” 
he answered, “but I did say I would show you how 
it is done. You will have to work, yourself, and 
w T ork hard, if you want a good bow.” 

“I’ll do anything for a bow!” Kood-shoo cried. 
“But I don’t know how to do it, or what to make it 
with! What do I need, Kah-mon-apik?” 

“There is a kind of bone that floats in the sea 
(wood) my father told me, that he made bows with. 
I’ve never seen it. I’ve always made my bows of 
bone.” 

“What bone?” 

“Seal ribs, and the bow will be all the better if 
they come from a young seal.” 

“That ought to be easy,” replied Kood-shoo, 
“there are lots of seals being brought into the 
village now. I’ll watch and get the bones before 
they are thrown to the dogs. ’ ’ 


152 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


The boy had not long to wait. Two days after 
his talk with Kah-mon-apik, Mirk-tu-shar brought 
in a young seal. Knowing, from Kah-mon-apik ’s 
description, that the ribs of this young seal would 
be ideal for the purpose of making a bow, Kood- 
shoo got the bones from Mirk-tu-shar and raced 
off with them to Kah-mon-apik ’s igloo. It was 
not as large a home as his igloo at Itti-bloo, but 
it filled the hunter ’s wants. The house Kah-mon- 
apik had used at Pituarvik the spring before, was 
occupied this year by another hunter, for, among 
the Eskimo, no one owns his home. All igloos 
are the property of the community and when a 
part of the tribe moves from one village to an- 
other, ‘ 4 first come, first served” is the only rule. 

“I’ve got the ribs for the bow!” cried Kood- 
shoo, as he came near the hut, and saw Kah-mon- 
apik and Pik-nun-ah, the hunter’s wife, sitting in 
the sun outside the door of the iglooya. Kah-mon- 
apik was still busy grinding down the meteoric 
iron that had come from the heaven-born-stones, 
into knife-blades, as he had done, in his odd min- 
utes, for months. 

Pik-nu-nah was equally busy, chewing hides to 
make them soft. This is an Eskimo woman’s 
principal work. After an animal has been skinned 


COMING OF THE WHITE MEN 153 

and roughly scraped by the men it is given over 
to the women to clean. They pare it still closer 
and then commence to soften it. This is done with 
the teeth alone. Taking a skin, they double in two 
a piece of it about two inches long, placing the fur 
sides together. This fold of green hide is then 
put in the mouth and chewed until all the fat, 
greasy matter in the skin is chewed out. It may 
take ten minutes of steady chewing to soften an 
inch of skin and then the next inch must needs be 
folded over and chewed in the same way. The 
whole hide has to be done several times. Eskimo 
women spend a large part of their lives chewing 
the green hides of freshly killed animals, and long 
before they are old, their teeth are worn down to 
their gums. 

Pik-nu-nah was busy on a new summer suit of 
seal-skins for her daughter, for the little girl was 
growing fast, and the last summer’s suit had 
grown too small. The new suit, closely resembling 
a boy’s, with its shirt and trousers, was nearly 
finished and partly sewn with sinew, but Pik-nu- 
nah wanted a piece or two more of dark fur, in 
order to finish the dark strip up the back of the 
kapetah. Like many of the Eskimo, she strove 
hard, by selecting darker and lighter shades of 


i54 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


fur, to give a pretty pattern to the clothing that 
she sewed. 

“ Are you going to try to make a bow, too, Kood- 
shoo?” she said, looking up as the boy came 
nearer. “You want to have everything just like 
Kah-mon-apik, don’t you?” 

“I’d like to be as big a hunter as Kah-mon- 
apik,” the boy said admiringly, for the leader was 
one of his heroes. 

Under Kah-mon-apik ’s guidance, Kood-shoo set- 
tled down to work. He took two of the springy 
seal ribs, which measured about fourteen inches 
round the curve. With long and patient labor, he 
cut off an inch from the point where the rib fits 
into the backbone, and five inches from the end of 
the rib, and pared the remaining bone down evenly. 
With modern tools, this could have been done in 
two minutes. It took Kood-shoo three days, 
working about fourteen hours each day. 

“That’s done, Kah-mon-apik,” he was able to 
say at last, as he laid before the hunter the two 
arcs of bone, each about eight inches long and 
curving more at one end than the other. 

“You have made them well,” the hunter said, 
as he looked at them critically. “Now, Kood- 
shoo,” he continued, “if you go into the igloo 






Eskimo Bow and Arrow. 

Photograph of “ The Owl,” one of Amundsen’s party. 

(By permission from Roald Amundsen’s “ The North-West Passage,” 
published by E. P. Dutton & Co., New York.) 





COMING OF THE WHITE MEN 155 

you will find the part of the antler of a caribou. 
It is good for the belly of the bow. Bring it 
here. ’ 9 

Delighted, for Kood-shoo well knew the diffi- 
culty of getting a straight piece of bone which 
should have the necessary elasticity, he went into 
the igloo and brought out the antler. Kah-mon- 
apik showed him how it should be scraped down 
with a trap-rock blade until it was all of one 
width, flat at the top and round at the bottom, 
fourteen inches in length. This took another two 
days’ labor. 

With the three pieces of bone thus prepared, 
Kah-mon-apik showed the boy how they should be 
lashed together, the straight piece in the middle 
and the two arcs of bone at either end, these over- 
lapping the central bone by about three inches. 
Where the bones came together they were scraped 
to form flat surfaces and the overlap was lashed 
firmly with sinew. On the tightness of this lash- 
ing the whole strength of the bow depended and 
Kah-mon-apik taught the boy the secret of making 
that lashing so tight that nothing should ever be 
able to loosen it. This completed, the stick of the 
bow was done. 

“In some bows,” the hunter told Kood-shoo, 


i$6 the polar hunters 

“the sinew-string is fastened into notches, but this 
is not good. Bone is smooth and the string may 
slip when yon need it most. We will make your 
bow with holes to hold the string. Bring me the 
drill.” 

Kood-shoo squirmed. If there was one kind of 
labor that he hated above another, it was working 
the ivory drill. Still, the toil was for his own bow 
and he fetched the instrument out of the igloo. 

The hunter fitted into the socket of the drill a 
tiny blade made of a flint chip, less than half the 
width of the boy’s little finger nail and with a 
sharp point. This he gave to the lad. Kood-shoo 
took the drill bow, an arched piece of rib with a 
twisted sinew string stretched across it, and bent 
the horns together enough to make a loop through 
which to slip the slender shaft of ivory drill, which 
was thus held tight by the spring of the tightened 
rib. He took in his teeth a mouthpiece, in which 
there was a socket for the top of the drill. Then, 
putting the end of the bow on the ground and set- 
ting the point of the drill on the place that Kah- 
mon-apik had marked out for a hole, Kood-shoo 
knelt down on the ground, fitted the top of the drill 
into the socket of the mouthpiece he held in his 
teeth, guided the drill with his left hand and, 


COMING OF THE WHITE MEN 157 

taking the bent rib in his right hand, began to saw 
it back and forth. The tight sinew string, en- 
circling the shaft of the drill, caused the shaft to 
revolve at a high rate of speed as the string wound 
and unwound, and the bone dust began to form in 
a fine powder in the slowly forming hole. 

Kood-shoo could not put much pressure on the 
drill, in the hope of getting through with the work 
quickly, for if there were too much force on the 
edges of the flint flake, it would chip off. Patience 
and a steady light pressure were needed. In 
about an hour’s constant drilling, the flint flake 
had made a perfectly smooth round hole right 
through the arc of young seal rib. Another 
hour’s equally arduous labor produced a similar 
hole in the other end of the bow and Kood-shoo 
took the mouthpiece from between his teeth, glad 
that this piece of work was over. 

From Ky-oah-pah the boy had begged some of 
the strong sinews from the tail of the narwhal and 
five of these were laid on the flat back of the bow 
side by side. These also were lashed fast with 
sinew, so that the entire bow was wound save for 
a length of two inches on each of the arcs and 
three inches of the splint bone in the belly of the 
bow, at which places the yellow bone showed clear. 


158 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

Deer sinews were then twisted together and glued 
with a compound made of blood, boiled oil, and 
soot, and this tough string, which would be unaf- 
fected by weather, was passed through the holes 
at the end of the bow. Loops were made in the 
string, beyond the holes, as the ends of the bow 
were pressed together, and little ivory pegs were 
passed through the loops. The string came taut 
as the bow straightened and the weapon was made. 

Kood-shoo now owned a bow, only the fourth in 
the possession of the tribe. His arrows, made of 
thin shafts of bone tipped with barbed fish-bones, 
and feathered from the guillemot, flew straight 
and well. 

With this bow, which was quite powerful despite 
its small size, Kood-shoo did deadly execution 
among the small birds and added greatly to Ky- 
oah-pah’s larder. Incidentally, he greatly im- 
proved the variety in his own fare. According to 
Eskimo custom, Kood-shoo had been deemed too 
young to be allowed to eat ptarmigan or any of 
the small birds and animals, just as he had been 
forbidden to eat eggs. When, however, he re- 
turned from his first bow and arrow hunt with a 
string of three birds, he knew that this prohibition 
would be lifted. A great banquet was held in the 


COMING OF THE WHITE MEN 159 

angekok’s igloo that day and Kood-shoo feasted 
on the birds that he himself had shot. Even the 
angekok, with all his wealth and skill, had never 
owned a bow nor shot an arrow. 

With this new weapon in his possession, the boy 
made no protest, when, weeks later, Ky-oah-pah 
summoned him to go with him to Bird Rock, the 
nesting place of the little auks. Kood-shoo knew 
that this trip meant netting rather than shooting, 
but Ky-oah-pah raised no objection to his taking 
his bow and arrows with him on the trip. Each, 
however, carried a net. The shaft of this was 
made of a narwhal ’s tusk, the small end to the 
hand. Into the sockets of the large ends were 
fastened the nets, made of sinews knotted to- 
gether, and, armed with these, the angekok and the 
lad climbed up the precipitous rock. 

The little auks, who were nesting there in hun- 
dreds of thousands, flew up from their nests with 
a shrill screaming, so many in number that the 
clouds of them darkened the air. Kood-shoo, who 
had been there in previous years, knew just what 
to do. He separated from Ky-oah-pah and, se- 
lecting a place where several nests were within 
reach of the swing of his net, huddled down on the 
ground and remained motionless. 


160 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

The birds, scared by the intruder in their nest- 
ing-place, wheeled and wheeled overhead. They 
swooped down closer and closer, their bright black 
eyes watching the boy. He never moved. He 
had long ago learned the lesson that wild creatures 
are not afraid of anything that is still, only of 
something that moves. Yet half an hour passed 
by before the little auks settled down on their 
nests again. 

Kood-shoo listened intently. Then he heard a 
sharp breath, like a faint whistle, from behind 
the rock where Ky-oah-pah was crouching. 

At the signal, the boy quickly lifted his long net 
and swished it over the nests. The birds, quicker 
in their flight than the motion of his hand, could 
not have been caught on their nests, but the net 
met them about three feet above as they were dart- 
ing away. The lad caught two with his first 
swoop. 

“How many, Ky-oah-pah ! ’ ’ he called. 

“Three,” the old man answered. 

“I only got two,” declared Kood-shoo, lugubri- 
ously. 

“You will do well to get two next time,” the 
angekok reminded him. 


COMING OF THE WHITE MEN 161 


Each took up new stations and waited for the 
birds to settle. 

There was more confusion this time, for the 
feathered creatures seemed to know instinctively 
that there was danger. They would perch on the 
nests, hut remain on the alert, ready to fly. Some, 
indeed, would barely alight and then fly off again. 
Almost twice as long a time as before elapsed be- 
fore the rookery was quiet again, and Ky-oah-pah 
gave the signal a second time. 

Action needed to be quicker this time and but 
one bird fell to Kood-shoo’s share. The angekok, 
his hand slower because of age, caught nothing 
with his second cast. 

“That’s three apiece, then,” announced Kood- 
shoo, satisfied now that he had caught up with the 
angekok. 

Again came the choice of a new station, and 
again a long wait. This time Kood-shoo’s net 
came in empty, while Ky-oah-pah caught one bird. 
Again new stations and when the birds settled, 
one little auk fell to Kood-shoo’s share while the 
angekok had none. Almost eight hours had been 
spent with the net and the prize was only eight 
birds. 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


162 

It was time to eat and rest. There were four 
birds for each. Following the angekok’s example, 
Kood-shoo took one of the little auks by the neck, 
and wrung its head off. Then, putting the thumb 
of his right hand under the skin, at the side of the 
neck, he ran it quickly down the back and, placing 
the body of the bird on his knee, with the lower 
edges of both hands pressed down the skin. With 
this, the bird was skinned. Then, running his 
thumb nail along the breast bone, two fine pieces of 
juicy fat meat were removed, about two mouthfuls 
in each. 

Kood-shoo stuffed one of these into his mouth, 
raw as it was, and after one or two chews, swal- 
lowed it almost whole. 

“Isn’t it good!” he said, and swallowed the 
other piece. 

There was very little meat on the bones, but 
such as there was, Kood-shoo ate it to the last 
morsel, and then set the bones aside carefully. 
Some of the finer ones might be used as needles 
and the rest could be given to the dogs. In 
Eskimo-land there is no such thing as waste. 
Everything eatable is eaten. 

The next auk was then skinned in the same way, 
the two tid-bits from the breast were scooped off 










































■ 




















’ 






. 
























i 



























































































































































. 

























COMING OF THE WHITE MEN 163 

with the thumb nail and the bones picked. After 
the meal was finished, Ky-oah-pah brought out a 
bladder full of soured seal oil, which, after taking 
a drink, he handed to Kood-shoo. The boy took a 
long draught and smacked his lips delightedly. 
The meal was over. Creeping into a little niche 
of the rock, Ky-oah-pah and Kood-shoo made a 
rough shelter, lighted the soap-stone lamp and 
went to sleep. 

The boy wakened with a start. The hundreds of 
thousands of sea-birds wheeling around the rock 
were protesting with their shrill cries. Ky- 
oah-pah was nowhere to be seen. Kood-shoo 
rolled up on his feet in a moment and went out on 
the ledge of the bird-rock. He found the angekok 
staring at the sea, his eyes fixed on the far horizon. 

1 ‘ What is it, Ky-oah-pah V 9 he asked. “A 
whale 1” 

The angekok slowly pointed with his arm. 

Far in the distance, in the path of the circling 
sun, a single column of black vapor showed. 
Kood-shoo stared at it until his eyes watered. No 
whale’s spout could be seen so far or would look 
so black. 

“What is it, Ky-oah-pah V 9 he asked at last. 

“ Qavdlunat ! ’ ’ the angekok answered solemnly. 


164 the polar hunters 

“It is the breath of the oomiak-soak, the white 
man’s boat. They will come here and the village 
will have food for many years, as the black hunter 
from the Kig-ik-tag-miut said when you first came 
to Itti-bloo, riding on a nannook’s back.” 

So eager was Kood-shoo to be in the village to 
welcome the white men that he wanted to start 
away immediately, but this the angekok would not 
permit. He kept Kood-shoo on the bird-rock for 
four days, and when at last the old man gave the 
word for the return, ninety skins had been se- 
cured. This was only enough for a grown man’s 
shirt, but when one shirt can be worn for many 
years and is never washed, four days’ labor is 
only a small price to pay. 

The smoke of the steamer had been coming 
nearer and nearer, but it was evident that the 
vessel was buffeting her way through the ice. The 
floes were heavy that season and nearly another 
week passed before the steamer struck the open 
water off Itti-bloo and came to anchor near the 
village. Kood-shoo was one of the first to go out 
to the white man’s vessel in his kayak. 

Imagine the boy’s astonishment when a white 
man — the first he had ever seen — leaned over the 
rail and shouted, in Eskimo : 


COMING OF THE WHITE MEN 165 

“Is Kah-mon-apik there ?” 

Quick as a flash the boy returned, 

“He’s coming, but I got here first.” 

“And who are you?” came the amused query. 

“I’m Kood-shoo,” the lad replied. 

“Want to come on board?” 

Kood-shoo wriggled with delight. Putting his 
harpoon crosswise in the kayak, he tied it to the 
ship’s ladder, and then carefully unbuttoned his 
seal-skin coat from the kayak, to which it was 
fastened so that not a drop of water should get in, 
even if he turned a somersault in the water, as he 
often did for the fun of the thing. Then he scram- 
bled up the ladder and stood for the first time in 
his life on an oomiak-soak, a “giant boat,” as the 
Eskimo call the white man’s ship. 

For a few minutes Kood-shoo stared around him 
without speaking, everything was so strange. 
This timidity soon passed away, however, and 
then he turned and began to deluge his informant 
with questions. The man’s clothes, especially, 
struck him as peculiar. 

“What kind of a skin is it?” he asked, feeling 
the texture of the coat the scientist wore; “is it 
man’s skin?” 

The white man, who was an expert from the 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


1 66 

American Museum of Natural History, and a close 
student of the Eskimo, thought for a moment as 
to the best way of explaining it to the boy. The 
lad’s quandary was simple, he had seen tanned the 
skin of every living creature he knew, except man. 

“No. It is only the hair of a skin,” the expert 
answered, “made into a very tight nei” 

“A net would let the cold in,” Kood-shoo an- 
swered suspiciously, feeling that he was being told 
what was not true. He had never seen a piece of 
cloth in his life, for the Smith Sound Eskimo 
do no weaving. They know no other material for 
clothing but furs. 

The museum expert pondered for a moment, 
then took up a small piece of sail-cloth that was 
lying on the hatch. 

“See, Kood-shoo,” he said, “the qavdlunat 
make these kinds of nets in this way.” 

He unraveled the cloth, thread by thread, show- 
ing the boy how one thread went over and under 
the other. The lad’s eyes followed the process 
very closely, and as he watched the scientist’s 
fingers, the museum expert watched the lad’s face. 
The professor was clearly puzzled by something 
he discerned in the boy’s manner, but he said noth- 
ing in regard to it. Patiently, knowing the slow- 


COMING OF THE WHITE MEN 167 

ness of the Eskimo mind when dealing with un- 
familiar things, he went on unraveling, thread by- 
thread. He had not done this for more than half 
a minute when Kood-shoo said unexpectedly, 

“I see the way of the net. But this will make 
furs only for the sunshine-time . 9 ’ 

“In the white man’s land,” the museum curator 
answered, “it is always sunshine-time.” 

He could think of no better way of explaining 
to Kood-shoo how much warmer was the United 
States than the ice-bound world of the Smith 
Sound region. 

From place to place about the ship the scientist 
took the boy, explaining, always explaining, and, 
in turn, putting to him leading questions that 
should bring him to tell about his Eskimo life. 
The scientist was learning as much as Kood-shoo, 
but the boy did not know it. 

The wood of which the ship was made proved to 
be one of the most difficult things for Kood-shoo 
to understand. He stood and looked up at the 
mast with awe, almost with fear. The scientist 
watched the boy’s expression and wondered at his 
sense of alarm. 

“What are you thinking about, Kood-shoo?” 
he asked. 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


1 68 

“I was thinking/ ’ the boy answered slowly, 
“that the white men must be very strong to kill 
so big a narwhal/ ’ 

This time it was the museum curator who looked 
puzzled. 

“What narwhal ?” he asked. 

“The one that had a tusk as long as this,” and 
the lad’s hand timorously touched the mast. 

In a flash the other understood. Kood-shoo, 
like all the rest of the Smith Sound Eskimo, had 
never seen a tree. None of the tribe had ever seen 
a piece of wood, for the driftwood that is so com- 
mon along the coasts inhabited by other Eskimo 
tribes cannot reach Smith Sound, and in all that 
frozen north-land, not a single straight thing is 
to be found except the spirally-grooved tusk that 
projects from the narwhal’s head. As this tusk 
is seldom more than seven feet long, a sea- 
creature which could bear a tusk as long and as 
heavy as a ship’s mast, 200 feet high, would be a 
fearful monster. It would needs be at least 400 
feet long, or more than four times as large as the 
biggest sulphur-bottom whale. 

“But that is not a narwhal’s tusk, my boy,” 
the white man said, “it is, it is — ” he stopped for 
a moment to think of something within Kood- 


COMING OF THE WHITE MEN 169 

shoo’s knowledge to which he could compare it, 
“it is a giant moss.” 

Kood-shoo blinked. This idea was more than 
he could grasp. Moss, to him, meant only a sub- 
stance which could be used as the wick for a blub- 
ber lamp. He had never seen moss more than a 
couple of inches high. 

Realizing that the lad did not understand, the 
museum curator took from his pocket a pencil and 
piece of paper. At the bottom of the paper he 
drew a rough picture of an Eskimo boy, in his 
furs, and made, beside the figure, a short few 
strokes to represent the Arctic moss. 

“Innuit!” he said, pointing to the boy. 

Kood-shoo nodded comprehension. The picture 
was almost a portrait of himself, and this kind of 
picture-writing was familiar to him from the carv- 
ings he had seen in Ky-oah-pah’s igloo. 

“And Innuit moss!” the museum expert con- 
tinued, sketching in the leaf-shoots with quick 
strokes of the pencil. 

The lad showed his understanding. 

“Now,” went on the professor, “here is a qavd- 
lunat boy,” and he drew a picture of a boy in 
American clothing on the same scale that he had 
drawn the little fur-clad Eskimo. “But the moss 


170 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


in the white man’s land grows big, very big.” 
He rapidly sketched on the paper, beside the white 
boy, the trunk of a large tree, ten times as big 
as the boy. In order that the comparison might 
be easier to understand, the professor delineated 
the leaves on this tree as though it were a moss. 

“Of course, Kood-shoo,” he continued, “there 
are not many giant mosses in the white man’s 
country that look like this, most of them grow in 
this way!” And, on the other side of the picture 
of the boy, he penciled a large tree. 

“It is from the stalk of this kind of giant moss 
that we make these masts in the oomiak-soak,” he 
continued, and wrote under the picture the word 
“Tree.” 

Kood-shoo took the paper from the curator’s 
hand. The museum expert, intensely interested in 
seeing how his explanation would appeal to the 
boy, and knowing the facility with which most of 
the Eskimo draw, said to him : 

“Can you write?” 

The boy nodded and took the pencil. He cast a 
look of bewilderment at it but his mind was too 
full of another matter for him to question about 
the pencil now. Laboriously he traced beside the 
picture of the tree a scrawling hieroglyph that 



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COMING OF THE WHITE MEN 171 

looked like ancient runes. The professor felt a 
cold thrill of excitement run down his back as he 
watched the Eskimo boy. 

Stroke by stroke, his tongue out of his mouth 
and moving with every movement of the lead- 
pencil, which he held in his hand for the first time 
in his life, Kood-shoo labored in the ' iking of a 
series of black scratches on the blan> page. They 
seemed to have no resemblance to anything that 
the scientist had ever seen before, yet undoubtedly 
to the boy there was a purpose and a plan. At 
last Kood-shoo finished and handed the paper back 
to the professor. 

“ It is a magic !” he said. 

With keen expectation, the museum curator took 
the paper and looked at it. The shaky trembling 
lines at first conveyed no meaning, but, as he held 
it out at arm’s length, suddenly he realized that 
the strange scrawls suggested a word. And that 
word was in English ! 

Kood-shoo had written: 

DIARY 

18 4 5 

“ Diary, 1-8-4-5?” the curator said aloud, pon- 
deringly ; ‘ 4 that’s, that’s eighteen forty-five. 


172 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


Let’s see, why does eighteen forty-five seem to 
stick in my mind as a particularly important 
date?” 

He rubbed his chin with his hand reflectively. 
Kood-shoo watched him eagerly, for he felt subtly 
that some great disclosure concerning his magic 
was at hand. 

“ Eighteen forty-five!” exclaimed the professor, 
in a changed tone, with a catch in his voice and a 
suddenness that made Kood-shoo jump although 
he did not know the meaning of the words. 
“ Eighteen forty-five,” he repeated, in growing 
excitement, “that was Franklin’s year!” 

He turned and gripped Kood-shoo by the shoul- 
der, speaking Eskimo so rapidly and so eagerly 
that he fairly stuttered. 

“What — what do you know about this?” he 
asked. 

“It is written on my magic!” the boy answered. 

“Your magic? You have a magic?” 

“It is a very great magic,” replied Kood-shoo. 

“Where did you get it?” 

“It was brought to me from a long way away, 
from the sleepland of the sun and moon. ’ ’ 

“From the West, eh?” 

The scientist raised his voice. 


COMING OF THE WHITE MEN 173 

“Commander !” he cried, “can you come here a 
minute ?” 

“Certainly. Have you found something al- 
ready, Professor ?” came the genial reply, as a 
heavy-must ached man with singularly piercing 
eyes came forward to the hatchway where the two 
were standing. 

“I think I have,” the ethnologist declared. 

He turned to the boy. 

“You have heard of Peary-soak?” he said. 

“Every one has heard of Peary-soak,” the boy 
answered, looking at the man whose fame was 
known to him as the greatest benefactor the Es- 
kimo had ever known. “Ky-oah-pah and Kah- 
mon-apik have talked to me a great deal about — ” 

“I think we have a new trace of Franklin, Com- 
mander,” the professor said abruptly, interrupt- 
ing the boy. 

There was a sudden quick tightening of the mus- 
cles of Peary’s face, betraying his intense inter- 
est, but his voice was quiet as he said, simply, 

“Why? What have you found?” 

For answer the scientist held out the paper on 
which Kood-shoo had scrawled the letters and 
pointed to them. 

“Diary — eighteen forty-five,” Peary read. 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


174 

He wheeled round upon the boy. 

‘ 4 Where did you find these words !” he queried, 
in fluent Eskimo. 

“You are Peary-soak!” the boy asked in return. 

“Yes, I am Peary-soak,” the great Arctic ex- 
plorer answered. 

“The black hunter from the Kig-ik-tag-miut — ” 

“Baffin Land tribe,’ ’ the professor interjected, 
explanatorily. 

“The black hunter,” the boy repeated, “said, 
when he brought me to Itti-bloo, that I should sell 
to the white men one of two magics that he gave 
me.” 

“Did he tell you for how much you should sell 
it!” 

“Yes,” the boy answered. “He said I should 
sell it to the white men in such a way that never 
again would the people of Itti-bloo need food. 
Ky-oah-pah told me what the black hunter had 
said when the feet of his breath were traveling 
over the night ice.” 

“And what is the magic! Have you got it here, 
or is it in the village ! ’ ’ 

The boy looked closely at Peary and decided at 
once that this was a man one could trust. He un- 
fastened the thong that held fast around his neck 


COMING OF THE WHITE MEN 175 

his sealskin coat, the water-proof coat that he 
wore when paddling in his kayak, and drew ont the 
sinew string to which was fastened the little cari- 
bou-skin bag. Never, since Ky-oah-pah had given 
it to him, had this pouch left its place around his 
neck. From it he took the little red note-book and 
handed it to Peary. 

The explorer took the book and looked at it. 
The thin red volume bore on its cover the words : 

“Diary, 1845.” 

So often had Kood-shoo taken out the magic 
and stared at it uncomprehendingly during the 
long hours of monotony in the igloo that his 
eyes had become familiarized to the shape of these 
letters, though, of course, he had not the faintest 
conception of their meaning. 

Two of the ship ’s officers, near by, were chatting 
and laughing. The professor caught the eye of 
one of them and laid his finger on his lips in sign 
of silence. Wonderingly, they paused. 

A subtle and incomprehensible thrill ran over 
the ship. Some sense of mystery traveled with 
the speed of light from mind to mind. The sail- 
ors stopped their work. Even the screaming of 
the seabirds seemed momentarily hushed. 

In the silence, Peary opened the red note-book, 


176 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

its pages stained and yellowed. He read a line or 
two, then, with a reverence characteristic of the 
man, he removed his cap. 

“It is the handwriting of Captain Fitz James of 
the Erebus,” he said; “poor fellow. It is the 
diary of a gallant man. ’ 9 

For a second the scientist forebore to speak. 
Then, as the explorer ruffled the pages of the book 
gently, he said to him in a low voice, 

“Are there any new facts, Commander V 9 
Peary shook his head regretfully. 

“I’m afraid not,” he said; “this tells only the 
story of the start of the expedition in 1845 and 
gives but a few notes dated from Beechey Island 
in the spring of 1846. If only this diary had been 
kept for the next two years!” 

Well might the explorer make that wish, for all 
that the world knows of the story of the next two 
years is told in one report, a hundred words in 
length, found on an isolated camp in King William 
Land; and in the graves and the remains of the 
hundred and twenty-nine men who perished from 
starvation, scurvy and exposure in the frozen 
north. The demons of the cold and dark took full 
toll of that ill-fated expedition, from which not one 
man ever returned to tell the tale. 


COMING OF THE WHITE MEN 177 

“Is it a real magic ?” asked Kood-shoo. 

“It is a very big magic,’ ’ Peary answered. 
“Tell him the whole story, Professor; there may 
be more that we can find, and perhaps this tribe 
may have the clew. Tell the boy all, if you can 
make him understand. I ’m going below. I want 
to read this carefully.” 

Carrying the book reverently, the explorer left 
them and went to his cabin. Kood-shoo watched 
the departure of his “magic” with misgivings, 
but Ky-oah-pah had told him often that Peary- 
soak was good as well as brave. The name 
spelled kindness as well as courage and endur- 
ance to the Eskimo, and the boy made no protest. 

The professor sat down on the coaming of the 
hatchway and motioned to Kood-shoo to sit beside 
him. The boy followed readily, and then the sci- 
entist, turning to him, said, 

“Shall I tell you the whole story of your 
magic?” 

The eagerness in Kood-shoo ’s eyes was an abun- 
dant answer, and he nodded vigorously. 

“It is a long tale,” the professor began, “and 
even yet not all the end of it is known. Though 
it is a sad story, my boy, it is a story of heroes. 
The world still waits to find out many things about 


178 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

it. It is a saga of to-day, for men still live who 
remember when the Erebus and Terror sailed 
from the white men’s shores. And in this great 
world-story, Kood-shoo, your little red book of 
magic plays its part. ’ ’ 

Loons, divers, auks, and gulls flew overhead, 
seals and walrus dashed their glistening bodies on 
the surface of the sunlit water, the great glittering 
icebergs floated slowly by, while, simplifying the 
record as he spoke, the museum expert told the 
Eskimo hoy all the dark splendor, all the terror 
and all the bitter desolation and the grief of the 
Franklin Expedition. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE LOST EXPLORERS 

“Many, many darknesses ago,” the scientist be- 
gan, 6 ‘ when even the old angekok Ky-oah-pah was 
only a baby, a great hunter among the white men, 
named Franklin-soak, left the white men’s land in 
two big ships to try and find a new sea through 
the ice.” 

“In oomiak-soaks like this?” Kood-shoo asked, 
his eye glancing around the vessel. 

“Something like this, but not as large,” the 
other answered, knowing that it would be impossi- 
ble to explain to an Eskimo boy that Franklin’s 
vessels were sailing ships with auxiliary steam 
power only. 

“They came up to the Innuit-land in these two 
ships,” he continued, “and forced them through 
the Middle Water. That, Kood-shoo,” he ex- 
plained, “is a current through the ice like the 
North Water, over there — ” he pointed with his 
finger — “only it is not so large.” 

179 


180 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

“I know all about the North Water,” the boy 
put in. ‘ ‘ I came that way. ’ ’ 

The scientist stared at him, not knowing what he 
meant, but Kood-shoo nodded in agreement. 

“And I killed walrns on the North Water, too,” 
he continued. “I knew that the white men called 
it that. Kah-mon-apik told me so.” 

The professor registered in his mind a deter- 
mination to find out a good deal more about this 
Eskimo boy who said that he had come to the 
Smith Sound region from some other land, over 
the North Water, but he wanted to keep the lad’s 
mind on the Franklin story and on his little red 
magic, and so he continued briskly. 

“The two ships, the Erebus and Terror, went on 
into Lancaster Sound, where two whalers saw 
them in the middle of the sunshine-time (July, 
1845). But, Kood-shoo” — the professor stopped 
and looked searchingly at the boy, “from that 
time neither of the two vessels was ever seen 
again.” 

“Did they sink?” queried Kood-shoo. 

“For two darknesses no one troubled to find 
out, for they carried plenty of food for that length 
of time. But when the two years passed by and 
nothing was heard from Franklin-soak or his gal- 


THE LOST EXPLORERS 


181 


lant sailors, the tribes of the white men joined 
together in a solemn vow to search until they 
found him and his men, that they might bring 
them food and a safe return to their white men’s 
country and their homes. Think, Kood-shoo, of 
the desolate homes in the white men’s land where 
women wait and wait in vain for the return of 
adventurers whose bones might lie bleaching on 
the snow or sunk in the lanes of black water be- 
tween the ice-floes!” 

Little by little, as he talked, the scientist lost the 
remembrance that his audience was only an Es- 
kimo lad, to whom most of the story could not be 
understood, but, as he spoke in fluent Eskimo, with 
its simple vocabulary of words, Kood-shoo, listen- 
ing with all his ears, was able to follow the 
speaker. And, as he listened with bated breath, 
there stole into the boy’s heart a wild ambition to 
do even as the white men had done, and to be even 
what they had been. A strange ambition for an 
Eskimo, truly, but the lad’s attention never wa- 
vered as the icebergs drifted slowly by and the 
tale of the Franklin tragedy was told anew, a few 
miles from the opening between the mainland and 
the islands, through which the Erebus and Terror 
sailed, never to return. 


182 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


* ‘ Under the leadership of Sir John Ross in the 
Enterprise and Captain Bird on the Investiga- 
tor,” the scientist continued, “these two vessels 
followed the track of Franklin’s ship, questing 
after him as a well-trained dog tracks the great 
Polar bear. Down Lancaster Sound they went, 
their sails spread to every breeze, their small en- 
gines whirling the round paddles at the stern. 
The swirling waters, filled with blocks of ice, bat- 
tered against them, but still the ships went on. 
Along the coasts they searched, exploring the 
shores of Prince Regent’s Inlet, the north and 
west borders of North Somerset. The dreary 
beaches of Barrow Strait were tramped by sailors 
from the vessels, but they returned to the ships, 
ever and again, always with empty hands. They 
passed, indeed, within a few miles of Beechey 
Island, where Franklin had wintered, but they 
never knew it. Back to the white man’s land they 
went, Kood-shoo, their search a failure. 

‘ 6 From far away on the other side of the sea of 
ice, through Behring Strait, there is another road 
from the frozen north into the world where the 
white men live. Up this grim road, around Cape 
Barrow, came two ships, also sent by the British 
Admiralty, the Plover under Commander Moore 


THE LOST EXPLORERS 183 

and the Herald , under Captain Kellett. A dour 
and a determined man was Commander Moore. 
Five darknesses he stayed in the ice and left not 
an inch unviewed from Point Barrow to Cape 
Bathurst, but when at last he returned, his hands 
were empty, too. The Franklin Expedition had 
never reached west so far. 

“Over the barren land of Arctic Canada, 
through which flows the mighty Mackenzie River, 
the third party of the white men struggled to the 
land of perpetual ice and snow. Terrible was 
their journey. They, also, amid snow-blindness, 
hunger and exhaustion, scoured the evil coast-line 
that stretches from the Mackenzie River to the 
Coppermine. At last they won back home, their 
lives safe, but no relic of the Franklin Expedition 
was in their hands and no word of the lost men 
was upon their lips. 

“So came another darkness over the Innuit 
land, Kood-shoo, with never a sign or a sound 
from Franklin-soak and the adventurers who had 
gone with him. Somewhere, on the polar ice, liv- 
ing or dead, must be the white men, almost as 
many in number as all the Innuits in all the vil- 
lages of the Smith Sound region. 

“When the next sunshine-time returned and 


184 the polar hunters 

passed with no news, several of the tribes of the 
white men held council together and decided to 
send out many ships for the rescue of Franklin- 
soak to find the men who still might he alive or to 
make sure that there were none left to save. So 
long as a white man was left in peril and distress, 
the rest of the white men could not sleep peace- 
fully in their beds without doing all that lay in 
human endeavor to save their hapless comrades. 

“There is a white man’s word, Kood-shoo, that 
I will have you learn. It is well that it should be 
the first word you will learn in the white man’s 
tongue and that one word is — ‘ honor.’ Repeat it 
after me, Kood-shoo — ” 

Strange stirrings lie in certain words. Did 
something like a flush mantle the cheek of the Es- 
kimo boy under its years-long coating of grease 
and soot! Almost it seemed so, as he repeated 
haltingly — 

“Onn-er, Onn-er.” 

“What does it mean!” the boy asked. 

The professor looked meditatively over the wa- 
ters of Smith Sound to the white ice beyond, the 
sepulcher of many a gallant man, as he strove to 
fashion in Eskimo speech the meaning of the 
greatest word in the English tongue. 


THE LOST EXPLORERS 185 

“It means truth,” he said slowly, “ truth even 
when a lie will serve one ’s welfare best. It means 
courage, to be a great hunter when the ways of 
life are dark as well as when the world is dark. 
It means faith and loyalty, never to desert a 
friend or comrade even in the bitterest pinch of 
death. And, further, Kood-shoo, it means chiv- 
alry or kindness, which is to help the weak or suf- 
fering in times of utter need. For this the good 
spirits have given strength to men. There is not 
one honor for the Innuit and one for the white 
men, there is but one honor all the wide world 
over and true knighthood may shine as fair un- 
der a muffling of Arctic fur as beneath a corselet 
of steel.” 

He paused, all unwitting that his own cheek had 
flushed crimson and his eyes were shining. 

4 4 Onn-er ! Onn-er ! ’ ’ repeated Kood-shoo 
softly. Then, in his Eskimo tongue, “I shall re- 
member it.” 

“It has only once been forgotten by white men 
in the Arctic,” continued the professor, “and that 
one time the traitor was crazed with hunger. 
There is no need to tell of that ; I speak to you of 
heroes. 

“The first discovery of Franklin-soak’s men,” 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


1 86 

the scientist continued, resuming his story, “was 
made at Cape Riley, on the south-west corner of 
North Devon, at the same time by two ships, the 
American brigantine Rescue under Captain Grif- 
fin and the British naval vessel the Assistance in 
command of Captain Ommaney (August, 1850). 
They left a record for the vessels that were fol- 
lowing. While they were examining the place 
cursorily, Capt. Ommaney ’s small consort, the In- 
trepid , reached the spot. Eager to push on as 
fast as possible into the ice, while water conditions 
were favorable, Captain Ommaney took his two 
vessels, the Intrepid and the Assistance , fifteen 
miles further on, but without finding anything 
more, and there they were frozen into the ice. 
The Rescue remained near by, awaiting the rest 
of the fleet. 

“Two days afterwards, four more vessels gath- 
ered near the point where the cairn or signal had 
been built by Ommaney and Griffin. These were 
the Lady Franklin , named after Franklin-soak’s 
loyal wife, and which was under the command of 
Captain Penny; the American vessel the Advance, 
under Lieutenant De Haven, who was accompa- 
nied by Dr. Kane; the Felix under Sir John Ross 
and the Mary under Commander Phillips. 


THE LOST EXPLORERS 187 

i i Pi*. Kane of the American vessel and Captain 
Penny of the Lady Franklin went ashore with a 
landing party. They found the record that Cap- 
tains Ommaney and Griffin had left, which not only 
referred to that camp, but stated that they had 
also found traces of an encampment on Beechey 
Island, ten miles south of the cape. Dr. Kane 
found the camp and described it in his journal. 
This was a diary, something like the little red 
magic of yours, Kood-shoo. 

“ ‘ Nearest the cliffs, ’ he wrote, ‘are four circu- 
lar mounds or heapings-up of the crumbled lime- 
stone, aided by larger stones placed at the outer 
edge, as if to protect the leash of a tent. Two 
large stones, with an interval of two feet, fronting 
the west, mark the place of entrance. Several 
large stones were so arranged as to serve probably 
for a fireplace. 

“ ‘More distant from the cliffs, yet in line with 
the four already described, is a larger inclosure, 
the door facing south and looking towards the 
strait; this so-called door is simply an entrance 
made of large stones placed one above the other. 
The inclosure itself is triangular ; its northern side 
about eighteen inches high, built up of flat stones. 
Some bird bones and one rib of a seal were found 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


188 

exactly in the center of this triangle, as if the 
party had sat aronnd it eating. ’ ’ ’ 

“That might have been an Innnit camp,” put in 
the boy, his remark showing that he was following 
the story closely. 

The ethnologist, knowing the lack of ability to 
concentrate which distinguishes primitive peoples, 
was as much astonished as interested in the lad’s 
ability to pay attention to a tale, with many words 
and references in it that he could not understand, 
but he only answered, 

“No, Kood-shoo, it could not have been an In- 
nuit camp, because the searchers also found there 
a piece of the netted hair, which the white men use 
for clothes, just like this kapetah that I am wear- 
ing now.” 

This was a conclusive answer, and the boy nod- 
ded in agreement. 

“The ships went on towards Wellington Chan- 
nel, while Captain Penny led a landing party over 
the rough, rocky and ice-bound shore. On a ridge 
of limestone between Cape Spencer and Point 
Innes they found further proof. ‘ Among the arti- 
cles they found,’ wrote Dr. Kane, ‘were tin canis- 
ters with the London maker’s label, scraps of 
newspapers, bearing the date 1844, two fragments 



The Angekok. 


Eskimo medicine-man and tellerof folk-stories. From a portrait byHaraltl 
von Moltke. (By permission from Knud Rasmussen’s “ People of the 
Polar North,” published by J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia, Pa). 



THE LOST EXPLORERS 189 

of paper each with the name of one of Franklin’s 
officers written on it in pencil. They told us, too, 
that among the articles found by Captain Penny’s 
men was a dredge, rudely fashioned of iron hoops 
beat round with spikes inserted in them and ar- 
ranged for a long handle, as if to fish up missing 
articles; beside some footless stockings, tied up 
at the lower end to serve as socks, an officer’s vest- 
pocket, velvet-lined, torn off from the uniform; 
all of which, they thought, spoke of a party that 
had suffered wreck and were moving eastward. 
Acting on this impression, Captain Penny was 
about to proceed (back) toward Baffin Bay, along 
the north shore of Lancaster Sound, in the hope 
of encountering them, or, more probably, their 
bleached remains. For myself, I did not see in 
the sign the evidences of a lost party; to me the 
party evidently was in motion.’ ” 

“ Which was right?” asked Kood-shoo, who was 
following the story closely. 

“The American, Dr. Kane, was right, it 
proved,” the professor answered. “The follow- 
ing morning, when the several commanders were 
in conference as to the best means of continuing 
the search, a messenger from the landing party 
came over the ice. 


190 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


‘ ‘ ‘ Graves, Captain Penny ! ’ he called. 4 Graves ! 
Franklin’s winter quarters !’ 

“The commanders of all the vessels, with Dr. 
Kane, started for the shore at once, and, after a 
hard climb, reached the top of a ridge that faced 
Cape Riley. Here they found three graves. Near 
by, were the remains of a blacksmith’s forge, with 
cinders and bits of iron, while shavings, showing 
that carpentry work had been done, were also to be 
seen, nearer to the beach. 

“ There rs no doubt that this was Franklin’s 
winter quarters during the winter of 1845 and 
1846. The places where the instruments were set 
up could be traced, with props still standing in the 
frozen soil. A blanket was found, rudely stitched 
into a coat, pieces of canvas, rope and tarpaulin, 
bits of casks, paper, a small key and some pieces 
of brass work. Tubs, made by sawing salt-beef 
barrels in half, were standing just as the sailors 
had left them. A pair of cashmere gloves was 
found lying on the ground, evidently set out to 
dry, for in each of them there was still a small 
stone placed in the palm to keep them from blow- 
ing away. There also remained a flourishing little 
garden of mosses, transplanted by some sailor who 


THE LOST EXPLORERS 


191 

wanted to give the desolate spot a little touch of 
home. 

“In spite of all these signs, no writing could be 
found, no record discoverable. There was noth- 
ing to show in which direction the white men had 
gone. Though five years had passed since the 
camp was made, sledge tracks were found almost 
as clean cut as the day that they were made, run- 
ning through a pass in the cliffs in the direction of 
Cape Spencer.” 

“Couldn’t the rescuers follow the tracks?” 
Kood-shoo asked. 

“They could and they did,” the scientist re- 
plied, “but there was no way of telling whether 
the sledges were coming or going. The tracks led 
in the direction of Wellington Channel. Captain 
Penny believed that Franklin had been wrecked 
and was returning; Lieutenant De Haven and Dr. 
Kane believed that Franklin had wintered com- 
fortably at Beechey Island and was advancing to- 
ward Wellington Channel. 

“Here the searchers parted, the British to ex- 
plore the supposed homeward journey, the Amer- 
icans to try and force their way into Wellington 
Channel. But when the Advance and the Rescue 


192 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


swung into that Channel, they found the ice condi- 
tions beyond the worst they could have imagined. 
Wall after wall of ice-ridge loomed in front of 
them, a frigid fortification that no ship could hope 
to break. Stubbornly, De Haven and Kane forced 
the vessels against the barrier trying at least to 
reach the point on the channel where the Franklin 
sledge tracks ended, but in this they failed. In 
less than two weeks 9 time they were frozen firmly 
in, and the slow backwards ice-drift began. 

“Under the pressure of the current, the ice- 
floes moved them gradually round the corner of 
Wellington Channel back into Barrow Strait, along 
the Straits to the mouth of Prince Regent Inlet 
and then the full length of Lancaster Sound out, 
back, into Baffin Bay. Many a time the pinching 
grip of the floes nipped the vessels but they were 
staunch. For nine months the two ships were im- 
prisoned in the ice, and when at last the explorers 
reached clear water they found themselves near 
the Danish colony of Disko Island, on the west 
shore of Greenland (July, 1851). They returned 
to the United States without the loss of a single 
man and with a large number of the Franklin rel- 
ics. Yet, Kood-shoo, although six darknesses had 
passed since Franklin-soak went into the north, 


THE LOST EXPLORERS 


193 


nothing as yet had been found to tell what hap- 
pened to the party after that first winter spent on 
Beechey Island. Your little red magic recounts 
the story of a part of that winter.’ ’ 

4 4 Mine!” cried Kood-slioo. 

4 4 Yes. Your magic is a writing made by one of 
the men who were in that camp with Franklin- 
soak.” 

4 4 Tell me the rest of the story,” begged the boy; 
44 1 want to hear more about the men who wrote 
my magic.” 

The scientist smiled inwardly. This personal 
touch bid fair to make Kood-shoo one of the most 
valuable aids the white men could have in their 
northern researches, for if his interest were ex- 
cited, the boy could be a great help in the never- 
ceasing search for the lost men of the Franklin 
Expedition, as well as the quest for the North 
Pole. 

4 4 In the same year,” he continued, 4 4 from the 
pathway to the white man’s land that is far to the 
westward, through Behring Strait, two parties 
went, the Enterprise under Captain Collinson and 
the Investigator under Commander McClure. 
The men under Commander McClure did what 
white men had never done before. They crossed 


i 9 4 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


from the western sea and came home by the east- 
ern sea. The year after Dr. Kane came home, an- 
other expedition, also sent by Britain, and which 
explored Wellington Channel in vain, sent a sledge 
party westwards under Lieutenant Pirn, which 
picked up, on the eastern shore of Banks Land, the 
men of the Investigator . 

4 ‘ The Enterprise came nearer yet to finding the 
truth of the Franklin story, for it passed through 
Dolphin and Union Straits to the head of Corona- 
tion Gulf and then steamed on to Victoria Land, 
where a search was made of the southeastern 
shores of that desolate island. Collinson was 
within a few miles of Point Victory on King Wil- 
liam Land and actually looked over the historic 
waters of Victoria Strait. Had he but known, 
Collinson ? s vessel could have passed right on and 
completed the Northwest Passage. But there was 
nothing to be seen on every side but ice, the land 
and the water almost indistinguishable, and Col- 
linson returned, unknowing how near he had been 
to complete success. 

“Then the Americans took up the search again. 
When the exploration of Wellington Channel 
brought no results, Dr. Kane veered to the belief 
that Franklin had sought safety by an eastward 


THE LOST EXPLORERS 


195 


march and hoped to find a trace of the missing men 
among the Greenland Eskimo, whither they might 
have reached by marching through North Devon 
and over Jones Sound to Ellesmere Land. Tell 
me, Kood-shoo, has Kah-mon-apik ever told you 
that there were white men at Netlik long ago?” 

“No,” answered the boy, “but Sip-su, the old 
angekok of Netlik, has a white man’s magic in his 
hair. It makes his hair straight and his head 
wise. I saw it when he was at the place near Im- 
nan-yana (Cape York) where the heaven-born- 
stones fell.” 

The scientist pricked up his ears at the phrase 
“the heaven-born-stones,” determining to ques- 
tion Kood-shoo about it later, but, still desiring to 
hold the boy’s attention to the Franklin story, he 
continued his recital concerning Dr. Kane. 

“The Advance , under the command of Dr. Kane, 
went up into the ice next year (1853),” the ethnol- 
ogist continued, “but the season was very cold and 
the warm weather very late. You can see, now, 
that there is clear water to the South, Kood-shoo, 
but, that year, Melville Bay was almost impass- 
able. Even the North Water was choked. It was 
quite late in the sunshine-time when the ship came 
opposite Cape York, and Smith Sound was a mass 


196 the polar hunters 

of icebergs that came pouring down like stones in 
a mountain avalanche. Kane was driven to the 
shore, not very far from your home village, Kood- 
shoo, and there he made a cache on Littleton 
Island, off Cape Ohlsen. ,, 

“I know that place !” declared Kood-shoo; “it’s 
got a big rock sticking up at one end that looks like 
a walrus standing on its tail. ’ 9 

“Yes,” the other answered, “that is it. Dr. 
Kane left some food there, so that, in case his ship 
was nipped in the ice, he could return and find 
food enough to take him south to a place where the 
whalers could reach him. In spite of the pressure 
of the ice, he forced his way into Kane Basin, 
reaching Rensselaer Bay, where his ship was 
frozen fast for the darkness. Here Kane stayed, 
the winter being very severe. Fifty of his dogs 
died and scurvy broke out among the men. 
Though he was so close to your people, Kood-shoo, 
in all that winter he never saw a single Innuit. 
He was just out of range of the sealing grounds of 
the Eskimo. 

“When the sunshine-time came (1854) he pre- 
pared for the sledging parties which would take 
food north, ready for his forward march if the 
Advance should be set free from the ice during the 


THE LOST EXPLORERS 


197 


summer. But, three days after his first advance 
party set out, although the sun was shining for 
eleven hours of the day, it became so cold (57° be- 
low zero) that Dr. Kane sent out a rescue party. 
Even so, he was too late, for two of the men died 
from exposure soon after their return to the ship. 

“As the summer drew on, some Innuit hunters 
visited the ship. It is thought they came from 
Netlik, Kood-shoo, but no one is quite sure of this. 
The hunting had been so poor during the winter 
and was so bad that summer that the Eskimo had 
scarcely food for themselves and could give none 
to the white men. In that extremity, Dr. Kane de- 
cided to lead a small party by sledge and boat 
over to Beechey Island, long trip though it was, in 
the hope of connecting with the British expedition 
which was due there that year. In the warmest 
part of the summer he crossed to Jones Sound. 
Farther, he could not go. Jones Sound was 
choked with ice-masses, the sea was closed around 
North Devon and there were no means of reaching 
Lancaster Sound. Moreover, had he reached Lan- 
caster Sound and found it impassable, the party 
would have perished there, as there would not 
have been food enough for the return. The men 
returned to the ship, hoping to go home. The 


198 the polar hunters 

summer passed and the ice never loosened its grip 
upon the vessel. 

“ There, on a rock in Rensselaer Bay, Dr. Kane 
built a great cairn to tell the story, should no 
member of the expedition survive the cold and 
darkness. They faced a winter without food or 
fuel, and, judging from their experience of the 
previous season, they were not sure of getting any 
meat during the cold and dark.” 

“Why not?” the boy asked. “ There are al- 
ways seals enough ! ’ ’ 

4 ‘They did not know how to catch them,” was 
the answer. ‘ ‘ Moreover, even if they had known, 
they had neither suitable weapons nor proper furs 
for sealing. They had no fish spears and knew 
nothing about Eskimo methods, while their guns 
were useless in a land where they could find no 
game but an occasional polar bear.” 

“The Innuit know more than the white men,” 
was Kood-shoo’s scornful reply. 

“In some ways, perhaps,” the professor agreed, 
smiling, “but only where life in the Innuit coun- 
try is concerned. These men did not know Es- 
kimo methods, and starvation stared them in the 
face, though, undoubtedly, within five miles of the 
ship there were seals and fish in plenty. Noth- 


THE LOST EXPLORERS 


199 


ing was known then about your people, Kood- 
shoo, so eight of the men, under Dr. Hayes, de- 
cided to start south on a thousand-mile journey 
to Upernavik. There they could get food and 
dogs for the return trip, with which they could 
bring meat for starving imprisoned comrades. ’ ’ 

“Hayes-soak!” exclaimed the boy. “I have 
heard that name. It was Hayes-soak who gave to 
the Innuit the white men’s comb that the angekok 
of Netlik wears in his hair.” 

“Yes, it probably was Hayes,” the scientist 
agreed. “He started with the eight men as I just 
said. The ice conditions were bad, for ten hours 
of labor on the first day took them only six miles, 
and fourteen hours’ labor the next day brought 
them four miles further on their course. There 
was no open water to be seen. The party was 
held at this point for some days, using up their 
food, for the ice was too thin for a sledge and too 
thick for a boat. At last it was firm enough for 
travel. They sledged some distance and found 
open water, where they took to the boats. The 
lead soon closed and a storm came up which 
nearly drowned them all, but at last they made 
camp on the ice-foot not far from Netlik. There 
the Eskimos found them the next day.” 


200 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


“Were the Netlik Innuit kind?” asked Kood- 
shoo, eager for praise of his people, though he 
knew that he himself did not belong to the Smith 
Sound tribe. 

“They were kind,” was the reply. '“Hayes 
and his men were too anxious to get south to stay 
long in Netlik and they took boat for Cape Parry, 
finally reaching a point sixteen miles below the 
cape. The long polar night was descending fast 
upon them and the sun remained above the hori- 
zon only for a short time each day. Soon it would 
sink altogether and travel would be stopped. To 
reach Upernavik, still seven hundred miles away, 
was impossible; to return to the brig was almost 
hopeless. There was nothing for them to do but 
to try and build some kind of a shelter in which to 
pass the winter. They had food for three weeks 
only and not a pint of oil. 

“They had not been settled very long, Kood- 
shoo, before Kah-loo-too-nah, who was then ange- 
kok of Netlik, came to them, with another Eskimo. 
Hayes greeted the Innuit with delight, but the 
angekok was not eager to help them. As long as 
Kah-loo-too-nah thought that he could secure fa- 
vors from the white men by helping them, he had 
been glad to welcome them at Netlik, but when he 




A Roll Aurora Borealis. 

Photograph made by the Belgian Meteorological Expedition at 
Bossekop, N. Sweden. 



A Blanket Aurora Borealis. 

Photograph made by the Belgian Meteorological Expedition at 
Bossekop, N. Sweden. 









































r 







THE LOST EXPLORERS 


201 


found the party almost starving and abandoned, 
he would do nothing more to help them. He had 
come to find out how long the white men could 
survive, as, after they died, it would be easy to 
take all their treasures. Dr. Hayes and his party 
were living on moss that they scraped from under 
the snow, together with sea-birds which they shot 
at long intervals, and these were growing fewer, 
for the darkness was closing in. They could hunt 
neither seal nor walrus, for the whole bay was 
piled with icebergs, jammed down by the current 
from Kane Basin. 

“ In this desperate stress, suddenly a young Es- 
kimo arrived from the village of Akbat, on his 
way north to Netlik. The white men gave him a 
present of a penknife, and his joy was so great 
that he piled on the ice, in front of the camp, all 
the meat he had on his sledge. Nor was this all, 
for on his return to Akbat he told his friends 
about it, and the next day fifteen of the Innuit 
from Akbat gathered at the little hut which the 
white men had built in a cleft of rock. 

“The Akbat natives were friendly and curious, 
as the natives of Netlik had been at first, but the 
white men had few presents to give them. Un- 
fortunately, there was little food in Akbat, and 


202 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


almost the entire village was moving to Netlik, 
where meat was more plentiful and the hunting 
better. Soon after the Akbat group arrived in 
Netlik, Kah-loo-too-nah returned to Hayes again, 
to find out how long it would be before the white 
men would be dead. Dr. Hayes knew well why he 
had come, but it would not be wise to show it, so 
he offered to buy some dogs and a sledge on which 
they might go back again to the ship. Kah-loo- 
too-nah said he had none.” 

4 ‘ That couldn’t have been true,” declared Kood- 
shoo; “they must have had dogs or all the Innuit 
would be starving. Besides, you said the Akbat 
Innuit had gone to Netlik. They must have had 
dogs to travel.” 

“Of course it wasn’t true,” the scientist agreed, 
“but that was what Kah-loo-too-nah said. The 
white men even offered to give their small boat in 
exchange for a sledge and a team of dogs, but 
Kah-loo-too-nah knew that if the white men died, 
the village would have the boat in any case, and 
so he refused to help them. Hayes then offered 
big presents if Kah-loo-too-nah would take two of 
the men to the ship to get supplies. The angekok 
was quite ready to agree to this, but there was no 
doubt that he was playing false. Still, the effort 


THE LOST EXPLORERS 


203 

must be made, and, the next day, the two white 
men started north. 

“They arrived in Netlik, having given to Ka- 
loo-too-nah everything that they owned except the 
boat. The two white men waited in the village 
for the sledges that should take them on the ship ; 
meanwhile the rest of the party with Hayes were 
starving. Finally the two sailors demanded that 
they be taken on to the ship. Ka-loo-too-nah then 
refused to go, saying that it was impossible to 
cross Cape Alexander, the blowing place, with the 
sledges. 

“Meantime, Sip-su, the angekok of another vil- 
lage and a bad man, came to Netlik. He urged 
Kah-loo-too-nah to kill the two white men first, 
then visit the camp and kill the others, taking 
everything they had. Kah-loo-too-nah agreed, 
but the white men understood the gestures of the 
Eskimo r and got their rifle ready. The Innuit 
were afraid of the gun and let the white men go. 
They had no food, no oil, no sledges and no boat. 
They could not return to the ship and there was 
nothing for them to do but to walk back to the 
cleft in the rock where they had left their com- 
panions, to live or die with them. 

“ ‘The Eskimo sullenly watched them from the 


204 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


shore as they moved off,’ Dr. Hayes afterwards 
wrote, ‘and when they had gone about two miles, 
the former hitched their teams and, leaving the 
settlement, were in full pursuit. The wild savage 
cries of the men and the sharp snarling of the 
dogs sounded upon the ears of the white men like 
a death-knell. In their previous anxieties they 
had not looked forward to this terror. 

“ ‘The ice-plain was smooth everywhere; there 
was not in sight a single hummock behind which 
they could hope to shelter themselves in the event 
of an attack. On came the noisy pack — half a 
hundred wolfish dogs. Against such an onset, 
what could have been done by two weak men 
armed by a single rifle? The dogs and the har- 
poons of their drivers, they thought, must soon 
end the murderous work.’ ” 

“Would an Innuit attack a white man ?” asked 
the boy. 

“It appeared,” the professor answered, “that 
they would not. The Eskimo seldom fight and 
they knew that one or more of them would be 
killed by the rifle, if they started to attack. None 
of them wanted to get killed. They kept ahead of 
the qavdlunat, hiding behind hummocks of ice, 
ready to dash out, if it should he safe. Realizing 


THE LOST EXPLORERS 


205 


the dangers of ambush, the sailors kept to the 
smooth ice and walked on, starved, half-asleep, 
nearly frozen and almost dead. They walked for 
fourteen hours and then the white men in the hut 
that was built in the cleft of rock suddenly heard 
footsteps and a moan. Rushing to the entrance 
of the hut they found one of the men unconscious 
in the entrance and the other a step or two outside 
it. They were alive, but that was all, yet they 
were in time to warn their friends, and the Eskimo 
never had a chance to surprise them in the hut. 

“The white men were growing very weak, and 
three days later, when visiting their traps, they 
saw Kah-loo-too-nah and two other Innuit watch- 
ing the camp. Hayes decided to pretend that he 
knew nothing of their plans and invited them into 
the hut. He was convinced that Kah-loo-too-nah 
would not have come so far from the village with- 
out meat on his sledge and he was bent on getting 
it, fair means or foul. 

“The head of the party was a white man’s 
angekok and he carried a powerful sleeping medi- 
cine (laudanum) with him. In order to show hos- 
pitality, the white men prepared a soup to give 
to the Eskimo. Into this the doctor poured the 
sleeping medicine. It was not long after the In- 


206 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


nuit had eaten it that they began to grow drowsy, 
thongh, being used to large meals, the medicine 
had less effect on them than it would have had on 
white men. 

“ ‘Our guests in a few minutes were asleep,’ 
Dr. Hayes wrote, ‘but I did not know how much of 
their drowsiness was due to fatigue, and how 
much to opium; nor were we by any means as- 
sured that their sleep was sound ; for they 
exhibited signs of restlessness which greatly 
alarmed us. 

“ ‘To prepare for starting was the work of a 
few minutes. We were in full traveling dress, 
coats, boots and mittens and some of us wore 
masks; the hunters’ whips were in our hands, 
and nothing remained but to get a cup or two from 
the shelf. One of us reached for the desired cup 
and down came the whole contents of the shelf 
clattering to the floor. 

“ ‘I saw the sleepers start; and, anticipating the 
result, instantly sprang to the light and extin- 
guished it with a blow of my mittened hand. As 
was to be expected, the hunters were aroused. 
Kah-loo-too-nah gave a grunt and inquired what 
was the matter. I answered him by throwing 
myself upon the breck, and crawling up to his 


THE LOST EXPLORERS 


207 


side, hugged him close and cried for him to go 
to sleep. He laughed, muttered something which 
I could not understand, and without having really 
suspected that anything was wrong, fell asleep 
again. 

“ ‘This incident convinced me that we could 
not rely much upon either the soundness nor the 
long continuance of their slumber, and that, in 
order to prevent our guests from getting to Net- 
lik before we should be beyond their reach, we 
must resort to other expedients. They must be 
confined within the hut and the possibility of their 
escape prevented until relief could come to them 
from the settlements. This could be accomplished 
only by carrying off their clothing.’ ” 

“Leaving them without any?” cried Kood-shoo. 

“That was the idea. They couldn’t follow the 
white men, then, and kill them,” the professor 
explained. “It was only in self-defense and the 
people at Netlik would be told what had happened 
and then they could go and rescue Kah-loo-too- 
nah. So, you see, no real injury was done. It 
was only a trick to gain time. 

“ ‘Everything was ready,’ ” continued the sci- 
entist, quoting from Dr. Hayes’s journal, “ ‘ my 
companions were impatient to be off. The cups 


2o8 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


that had fallen from the shelf were lying about the 
floor, endangering every movement. If the Es- 
kimo should detect us, I knew that our fate was 
sealed. We crawled noiselessly out of the hut, 
carrying with us the boots, coats and mittens of 
the Eskimo sleepers. I gave one man a rifle and 
stationed him at one side of the door. I took the 
double-barreled shot-gun myself, and took posi- 
tion at the other side. It was my intention, in 
case the Eskimo should discover us, to await their 
coming out of the hut, and under cover of our 
guns, compel them to mount the sledges and drive 
us northward. 

“ i The other men went down and prepared the 
dogs and sledges for starting. The animals were 
greatly frightened by the sudden and novel treat- 
ment to which they were subjected and it was with 
much trouble that they were harnessed. Mean- 
while, one of the men brought up a great portion 
of the meat and having placed it in the passage, 
knowing that it was sufficient to last the impris- 
oned Eskimo for six days, we tore down the snow 
wall in front of the hut and with the frozen blocks 
barricaded the door so that the men could not get 
out. Soon all was ready. The poor dogs, howl- 
ing in terror, dashed off at the first crack of the 


THE LOST EXPLORERS 


209 

whip and once more Fort Desolation was at our 
backs/ ” 

“Were they trying to go to the white man’s 
land by sledge 1 1 ’ queried the boy. 

“No,” the professor answered, “with the meat 
they had taken from Kah-loo-too-nah, they were re- 
turning to the ship to share the meat with their 
comrades. 4 The dogs,’ said Dr. Hayes, ‘gave us 
much trouble. Unaccustomed to us or our voices 
and startled by our sudden appearance among 
them, they seemed to be too much frightened to 
submit to control; and, setting off at a furious 
pace, they dashed helter-skelter over the plain, 
some running one way, some running another, 
their tails down, their ears up — all uttering their 
weird cry and seemingly possessed with the one 
idea of breaking away from their strange-looking 
drivers. My team twice took me back almost 
to the hut before I succeeded in getting any 
mastery of them and, weak as I was, they had by 
that time nearly mastered me. The other men 
were having a similar tussle with their dogs 
which had carried them out among the rough ice 
in the bay half a mile from the coast. 

“ ‘At length my brutes’ heads were turned from 
the hut and we were dashing at a ten knot speed 


210 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


after the other sledges. I thought now that my 
trouble was over; but no sooner had I overtaken 
my companions than my wolfish herd flew past 
them ; and then, wheeling round, some to the right 
and some to the left, they turned short and threw 
the sledge over backward, rolled my neighbor and 
myself into the snow and bolted for the south. 

“ 6 I caught the upstander of the sledge as I 
rolled off and was dragged several yards before I 
could regain my feet. At this moment the dogs 
were plunging through a ridge of hummocks. 
The point of one of the runners caught in a block 
of ice. All but two of the traces snapped short 
off and away went the dogs back to their drugged 
masters. To secure them again was impossible. 
The two animals which remained were hastily at- 
tached to the other sledges and, leaving the third 
sledge jammed in the ice, we continued on our 
course. 

“ ‘As we proceeded, the dogs became more ac- 
customed to our voices and we made good head- 
way. Cape Parry was reached without further 
accident. Here we halted in a cave on the south- 
ern side of the point to make some repairs and 
refresh ourselves with a rest and a pot of coffee. 

“ ‘We were preparing to start again through 


THE LOST EXPLORERS 


21 1 


the hummocks, when six men suddenly bowled 
round the point with a sledge and half a dozen 
dogs. They were coming toward the camp as fast 
as they could and were about two hundred yards 
away. 

“ ‘I recognized them at once as our late pris- 
oners. They had been able to extricate them- 
selves from the ice hut, pull out the sledge we 
had abandoned, and refreshed with sleep and food, 
had attached the dogs that had escaped from us 
and had taken up the trail. Each party discov- 
ered the other at about the same moment and 
both were equally surprised. The Eskimo were 
of course in our power, although they did not 
realize it, but the surest way to guard against an 
attack was to strike terror into them. Seizing 
the rifle, I sprang over the ice-foot and ran out 
to meet them, one of the men beside me with the 
shot-gun. The Eskimo stopped when they saw 
us and held their ground until we came within 
thirty yards of them, when, halting, I brought my 
rifle to my shoulder and aimed it at them. They 
turned away, and throwing their arms wildly 
about their heads, called loudly to us not to shoot. 
I lowered my rifle and beckoned to them to ad- 


vance. 


212 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


“ ‘Our prisoners were a sorry-looking lot. 
They had arrayed themselves in our blankets, 
cutting holes in the middle of them for their 
heads. One had discovered an old pair of boots. 
The others had wrapped their feet in pieces of 
our blankets. None, however, seemed to have 
suffered in the slightest from cold. They had 
been awakened by the escaped dogs running over 
the roof, as we had feared would be the case.’ ” 

“I suppose the white men made the Innuit take 
them back to the ship,” suggested Kood-shoo. 

“Yes, but they made the people of Netlik feed 
them well first. Then, by threatening the villagers 
with guns, they secured a great deal of food and 
started for the northward. But still Cape Alex- 
ander, ‘the blowing place,’ lay before them.” 

“I have heard Kah-mon-apik speak of the ‘blow- 
ing place,’ ” said Kood-shoo, nodding his head 
sagely. 

“ ‘As they neared the great Cape,’ the scientist 
continued, this time quoting by memory from 
Deltus Edwards’ ‘Toll of the Arctic Seas,’ ‘the 
wind maintained its reputation given by the 
Eskimo and blew a gale. Night came on and 
the moon hid her face under a cloud. The dogs 
could hardly keep their footing and the men them- 


THE LOST EXPLORERS 


213 


selves pushed the sledges. It was a wild time. 
The seamen had no light to guide them other than 
the glimmer of the stars. The cliffs, which now 
towered a thousand feet above them, intensified 
the gloom. The air was filled with icy drift, 
which sometimes obscured the land and at other 
times cut into the men’s faces terribly. 

“ ‘As they approached the sharp prow of rock, 
running far out into the bay, a wide black streak 
began to open before them. The ice, driven by 
the gale, was moving from the land and a broad 
sheet of water now stretched away into the west. 
The floes were in motion. The racket of the crash- 
ing ice, the roaring of the gale and the howling 
of the dogs made it almost impossible for the men 
to hear one another’s shouts. 

“ ‘They ascended a hummock to take a better 
view of the situation. To make the passage by 
the mainland was impossible, for there was no 
break in the cliff by which they could reach the 
high table-land; to turn about and seek a route 
into the interior farther down the coast would 
have been certain death, as they could not have 
faced the terrific blasts of the storm; the ice-foot 
ran along the face of the cliffs, sometimes ten feet 
above the sea, sometimes thirty feet above, but 


214 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


seeming to offer an unbroken path north. It was 
determined to attempt to pass around the cape 
by this perilous trail. They could not remain on 
the ice, to be carried into the bay, for they had no 
boats and would be drowned as soon as the floes 
broke up. 

“ ‘ Returning to the land, they climbed the ice- 
foot by using their sledges for ladders. In a few 
minutes they were beyond the break in the ice that 
baffled them ; then they took to the field-ice again ; 
once more to the ice-foot, and, by alternating, 
managed to make good progress. In places the 
ledge was ten and fifteen feet wide, and smooth; 
in other places it narrowed down to one and two 
yards, where more caution was necessary, and 
frequently, where there was an unusual formation, 
scarcely room enough remained for the sledges. 

“ ‘Along this they crept, yard by yard, toward 
the extremity of the cape, projecting into the 
water like the sharp-pointed plow of a locomotive. 
About twenty yards from the point, the ledge be- 
gan to narrow gradually. The Eskimo, reaching 
this, halted, and would not move until Dr. Hayes 
threatened them with his revolver. Then they 
edged a few feet further on, but stopped, mute at 
the conditions that they saw ahead. 


THE LOST EXPLORERS 


2IS 


“ ‘At the point of the cape, the ice-foot was no 
more than fifteen inches wide, and, to make it all 
the more perilous, sloped slightly, giving the most 
precarious sort of a surface for a foothold. The 
men huddled against the rocks hopelessly. The 
wind was whirling the snow, sleet and spray 
through the air in furious eddies; the sea broke 
against the ice-foot twenty feet or more below 
them with a roaring, and great patches of snow 
tumbled from above onto the dozen atoms of hu- 
manity clinging, like storm-beset birds, to the side 
of the cliffs. They could not turn back and face 
the gale; to go forward seemed to be impossible; 
yet Dr. Hayes resolved to try. 

“ ‘Advancing carefully to the point of the cape, 
he took off his mittens and, clinging with his bare 
hands to the crevices in the rocks, slid one foot 
after another, tremblingly, along the dangerous 
brink. Below him was the water, black as ink, 
save when lit up by a phosphorescent wave that 
dashed against the ice. To make a slip of a foot- 
hold or finger-hold would mean to be dashed to 
death in the sea. But the howling gale helped him 
and pressed him against the rocks. Inch by inch 
he moved to the extreme angle, then reached one 
hand around to the other side, got a firm grip on a 


2l6 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


knob of stone and pulled himself to safety. On 
the northern side of the cape, the ice-foot again 
widened out to three or four yards. Dr. Hayes 
was safe; but could he draw the rest of the cara- 
van around! 

“ ‘ Dropping down on hands and knees, he 
crawled to the point and called for the dogs. The 
animals, one by one, were half-driven, half-pushed 
to the extremity of the cape, seized by the harness 
by Dr. Hayes and swung around in safety. When 
the animals were with him, Dr. Hayes called to the 
men to hitch the traces to a sledge, push it out as 
far as they could on one runner, and holding on 
to the upstanders, keep it from toppling into the 
sea. Then he harnessed the dogs to the other 
end of the traces, and, at a snappy “Ka! Ka!” 
from him, the shaggy animals jumped away like 
a flash of lightning, whipping the sledge around 
the point before it could fall over the precipice. 
After the sledges were around, a trace was held 
for the men as a sort of railing and one by one 
they reached the other face of the cape. Except 
for frost scars on their fingers, not one of the 
men was harmed in the slightest. 

“ ‘Thence it was only a few hours to Etah, 


THE LOST EXPLORERS 


217 


where they were feasted and rested and the 
journey to the ship was resumed. They reached 
there the next day, to find their comrades living 
on the rats they caught in the ship’s hold. All 
through that winter they were fed by the Eskimo 
and when the sunshine-time came again, Dr. Kane 
left the ship still frozen in, and in two whale-boats 
made his way south to the Danish settlement of 
Upernavik. , ” 

“ And they didn’t find the men of Franklin-soak 
either?” asked Kood-shoo. 

“Not a sign of them; they had desperate work 
getting home themselves. But while Kane and 
Hayes were starving in their brig in Kane Basin, 
another party, under command of Dr. Rae, had 
been more successful. Traveling north by Hud- 
son Strait, Fox Channel and Frozen Strait, Rae 
reached his quarters at Repulse Bay (August 
1853). Wintering comfortably there, as soon as 
the sunshine-time returned he crossed the isthmus 
to Kelly Bay. There he met an Innuit with a load 
of musk-ox meat on his sledge, who led him to 
an encampment where all the members of the tribe 
had knives, silver tableware, medals and numer- 
ous articles made of wood. To make the matter 


2 1 8 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


sure, Dr. Rae found in this Innuit summer camp 
a round silver plate engraved ‘Sir John Franklin, 
K. C. B.’ ” 

‘ ‘ And did he ever find out from the Innuit what 
had happened to Franklin-soak !” 

“He did, my boy. Dr. Rae reported in the 
spring, six winters past, or about 1848, while some 
Eskimo families were killing seals near the north 
shore of a large island named King William Land, 
about forty white men were seen traveling in com- 
pany southward over the ice, dragging a boat and 
sledges with them. None of the party could speak 
Eskimo well enough to be understood, but by signs 
the natives were led to believe that the ship or 
ships had been crushed by ice and that the white 
men were now going to find a place where there 
might be deer to shoot. 

“At a later date the same season, but previ- 
ous to the disruption of the ice, the bodies of some 
thirty persons and some graves were discovered 
on the continent, and five dead bodies on an island 
near it, about a long day’s journey to the north- 
west of the mouth of a large stream, which can be 
no other than Back’s Great Fish River. Some of 
the bodies were in a tent, others were under a 
boat, which had been turned over to form a shelter 


THE LOST EXPLORERS 


219 


and some lay scattered in different directions. 
From the mutilated state of many of the bodies 
and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that 
the men had been driven to the dread alternative 
of cannibalism as a means of sustaining life. 

“ Three years later, Kood-shoo, the last word 
was found of the Franklin Expedition. Captain 
McClintock and Lieutenant Hobson in the Fox 
(1857) followed the track of Franklin-soak from 
Beechey Island, where the party had wintered, to 
King William Land, at which place the Eskimo 
had reported the discovery of the bodies of the 
white men. It took McClintock three years of 
constant battling with the ice to reach King Wil- 
liam Land, where he found the Eskimo who live 
near the Magnetic North Pole well provided with 
relics of the ill-fated expedition. At last, at Point 
Victory, Hobson found a record, the only written 
statement that ever came from the doomed Frank- 
lin Expedition in all its trying winters in the 
north. 

“It told of the real accomplishment of the 
Northwest Passage and then of the death of Sir 
John Franklin in June, 1847. The old hero died 
when all seemed to be going well. But when the 
summer of 1847 came and went without any break- 


220 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


up of the ice, the vessels being too far away from 
any human help to reach them, then Captain 
Crozier, second in command of the expedition, 
found himself in a desperate case. 

“All through the summer he waited for the ice 
to move, for the ships had gone so far that if there 
should be even two weeks of open weather he 
would be able to steam to the eastward and make 
connections with the Pacific side. There, they 
would not only be able to secure food, but they 
would have made the Northwest Passage with 
their vessel, the dream of the white men for cen- 
turies. Eagerly they watched, but no black lane 
of water opened. The ice held fast and firm. 
The polar night was closing down and there was 
little chance of return. Scurvy had settled upon 
the crews and at the end of the winter, twenty- 
four more men had died. 

“As soon as the days grew long enough, next 
sunshine-time Crozier abandoned the ships, firing 
a last salute over the waters where Sir John 
Franklin lay, and with his weak and broken men, 
now one hundred and five in all, began his forlorn 
journey to the south. Four days were spent alone 
in covering the fifteen miles that lay between them 
and the land. They reached Point Victory, and, 


THE LOST EXPLORERS 


221 


around the record that had been put in the cairn 
a year before, which told of their splendid ad- 
vance, they wrote a second report ending with the 
fateful words : 

“ ‘We start, to-morrow, April 26th, (1848) for 
Back's Great Fish River.' 

“ ‘Then,' as Deltus Edwards graphically tells 
it, ‘the terrible advance began. There were one 
hundred and five men, starving and disease-rid- 
den, many of them unquestionably on the verge of 
insanity through their sufferings, but Crozier held 
his men together with the strictest sense of disci- 
pline. Into the south and east they moved, a 
broken caravan of lost souls. Game failed them, 
or at best they had only a few half-famished 
ptarmigan. 

“ ‘Worn out by disease and starvation, the 
men dropped by the wayside singly and in pairs, 
and each day must have told the party that it was 
marching nearer and nearer to its doom. They 
met some Eskimo but they understood them not 
at all, and one old woman told that when she saw 
them, later in the summer, they were scarcely to 
be recognized as human beings at all. They 
“were as dead men walking," she said, “and some 
of them died and fell down as they walked." 


222 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


“ ‘By graves and skeletons, pieces of clothing, 
tent equipment, an abandoned boat here and a de- 
serted sledge there, the terrible path of death is 
marked clearly from Point Victory down and 
around to Todd Island, just off the southeastern 
corner of King William Land, where the men must 
have made their last camp, for graves and bones 
were found there. Only a few stragglers re- 
mained now, disintegrating, physically, morally 
and mentally, and kept alive only by such food as 
was provided by the bodies of their own kind. 
Putting out over the ice, they sought to reach 
Point Ogle or Montreal Island, but, having no 
boat, and lacking the strength to move over the 
tumbling and shifting ice, were drowned or 
crushed in the grinding floes.’ ” 

“Is it sure that they are all dead!” queried the 
boy. 

“The graves of many of them have been found,” 
was the answer, “and the skeletons of many more 
are left unburied. Scores are at the bottom of the 
icy waters. It is seventy years ago, Kood-shoo; 
yes, they must all be dead. Stories have come, 
from time to time, suggesting that a few reached 
some Innuit camp where they lingered and took 
up an Innuit life, but all that coast has been ex- 


THE LOST EXPLORERS 


223 

plored and not a further trace of them has been 
found. 

“One more last search was made by Hall, a 
sturdy young American, who learned to know the 
Eskimo and lived three years with them (1864- 
1867). He spent a summer on Todd’s Island, 
where the Franklin men had made their last sad 
camp. There, on the mainland near by, he built 
a monument, raised the Union Jack and the Stars 
and Stripes on it and fired a salute in honor of the 
heroes who had solved the problem of the North- 
west Passage.” 

“And my magic?” asked the boy. 

“Must come from somewhere on that march.” 

“And you will want it?” 

“Yes, we will buy it from you, Kood-shoo. You 
can be sure of that. ’ ’ 

“And my people of Itti-bloo will never be 
hungry again?” 

“Your people?” 

The scientist looked strangely at the boy. 

“Your people?” he questioned, again. “This 
is sure. The people of Itti-bloo need never be 
hungry again. ’ 9 


CHAPTER VII 


NEAR DEATH ON THE GREAT ICE 

Ky-oah-pah had boarded the ship while the 
Franklin story was being told, and when the 
museum expert saw him, he gave the angekok a 
hearty welcome. 

“I have been talking with Kood-shoo, ,, he said. 
“He seems to be a friend of yours, Ky-oah-pah. ’ ’ 

“He is a good friend/ ’ said the old man; “he 
carries with him the power of the demons. ’ ’ 

The professor stiffened with attention. As an 
ethnologist, he was especially interested in the 
Eskimo, chiefly in their customs and their beliefs. 

“What do you mean by that?” he asked. 
“Your words are dark like a cave in the cliff 
when the storm cloud hides the stars and the moon 
is sleeping.” 

“Have you not told the white men about the 
black hunter of the Kig-ik-tag-miut ? ’ ’ queried the 
angekok, turning to Kood-shoo. 

“No,” the boy answered. “I have said noth- 
ing.” 


224 


ON THE GREAT ICE 


225 


“Do you wish that I should speak?” 

“You were there,” the lad replied. “No one 
knows more about it than you do. You tell the 
story . 9 ’ 

“It was thus, then,” the angekok rejoined, 
turning to the scientist, and he told the story of 
the black hunter, of the nannook and of the boy 
who came drifting down the North Water on a 
cake of ice. 

“So,” said the ethnologist thoughtfully, when 
the tale was finished, “you suppose Kood-shoo to 
be in league with the demons.” 

“We know that he is,” Ky-oah-pah answered 
simply, “and many proofs of it have come.” 

Thereupon, the angekok launched out into a de- 
tailed description of Kood-shoo ’s life in the vari- 
ous villages in which the Eskimo had lived since 
Kood-shoo was a child, ascribing to the lad’s pres- 
ence many occurrences which the ethnologist per- 
ceived to be due only to natural causes. The boy 
noticed, however, that the angekok kept silence on 
the finding of the heaven-born-stones. 

A strong friendship speedily arose between the 
ethnologist and Kood-shoo and no kayak was seen 
more often around the ship than that of the boy. 
Dressed in his water-proof sealskins that fast- 


226 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


ened tightly to the sealskin covering of the kayak, 
which possessed only a small hole in the top for 
Kood-shoo to squeeze his legs through, the boy 
was quite dexterous in his use of the double-pad- 
dle. More than once, when his friend was watch- 
ing from the ship’s rail, the lad, with a strong 
sweep of his paddle and throwing the weight of 
his body to one side at the same time, turned a 
complete somersault in the water. 

The first word that he had learned in the white 
man’s tongue was not forgotten, and many a time, 
either in his cabin aboard the ship, or in the big 
house that Peary built on the shore, the scientist 
would hear the clear call, 

4 4 Onn-er ! Onn-er ! ’ ’ 

Kood-shoo used the cry as a watchword, and 
found it, like the word itself, a key that unfastened 
many doors. 

In this house, built on Bowdoin Bay, came, for 
the first time in the history of the north, a blue- 
eyed qavdlunat baby. The snow had melted on 
the shores, and, as if to greet the child, blue and 
white and yellow flowers sprang up like magic 
amid the moss, while the crowberries were ripening 
on their low stems. The icebergs were drifting by 
along the coast, broken off from the great glaciers 


ON THE GREAT ICE 


227 


that discharged their burdens into Smith Sound. 
The walrus, larger than oxen, fought with their 
ivory tusks and bellowed until their roaring could 
be heard miles away. The mottled seals swam in 
and out by hundreds, their glossy skins shining in 
the sun, which at this time never sank below the 
horizon night or day. Schools of narwhals, the 
unicorns of the north, flashed their white spears in 
and out of the blue water. Shaggy white bears 
ran over the ice cakes or swam rapidly through the 
water after seals. Such were the sights and such 
the sounds that greeted a stranger like to whom 
the north had never seen before. The Eskimo 
called her Ah-poo-mik-a-ninny, “Snow Baby.” 
The white men called her Marie Ah-nig-hito 
Peary. 

“This little blue-eyed stranger ,’ ’ wrote her 
father, “born at the close of the Arctic summer, 
deep in the heart of the White North, far beyond 
the farthest limits of civilized people or inhabita- 
tions, saw the cold, great light of the Arctic sum- 
mer once only before the great night settled upon 
us. Then she was bundled in soft, warm Arctic 
furs, and wrapped in the Stars and Stripes. 

“The first six months of her life were spent in 
continuous lamp-light. When the earliest ray of 


228 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


the returning sun pierced through the window of 
our tiny room, she reached for the golden bar as 
other children for a beautiful toy. Throughout 
the winter she was a source of the liveliest interest 
to the natives. Entire families journeyed from 
far-away Cape York to the south and from distant 
Etah to the north, to satisfy themselves by actual 
touch that she was really a creature of warm flesh 
and blood, and not of snow, as they at first be- 
lieved. ’ ’ 

The villagers of Itti-bloo were this year living 
in Im-nan-yana, the village to which Kood-shoo 
had come with the black hunter of the Kig-ik-tag- 
miut and the nannook, so that it was but seldom 
that Kood-shoo could visit the baby daughter of 
Peary. Four journeys he made, however, during 
the winter, each time bringing toys for the child. 
He even gave her his favorite carving, a sledge 
with eight dogs harnessed and hitched, the sledge 
being carved from a piece of narwhal tusk and 
the dogs from the tusks of walrus. It had been 
the boy’s hobby during the long nights in the 
igloo for several darknesses past. 

By a coincidence, the second trip made by Ky- 
oah-pah and Kood-shoo to Anniversary Lodge, as 
Peary called his house, and on which the boy 



Courtesy of FrecVk A. Stokes Co. 

Marie Ah-ni-ghito Peary in Eskimo Dress. 

Daughter of the discoverer of the North Pole, the only white haby ever 
born among the Smith Sound Eskimo, dressed exactly like her play- 
mates in the country of her birth. The hood is usually pulled 
down further over the face, covering forehead, cheeks and chin. 





ON THE GREAT ICE 


229 


gave this ivory sledge and dogs to the three- 
months-old daughter of the explorer, occurred dur- 
ing the second moon of the winter, on Christmas 
Day. Kood-shoo was fifteen years old, but this 
was his first Christmas and his chatter of ques- 
tions was continuous. After a couple of hours 
of it, the ethnologist gave up in despair. 

“I don’t know where you got your habit of ask- 
ing questions, Kood-shoo,” he said at last; 
“ you ’re as bad as any white boy.” 

The angekok smiled. 

“He cannot ask me questions any more,” he 
said, “I have taught him all I know. He must 
ask questions of the white men now. ’ ’ 

None the less, the scientist patiently answered 
question after question, though he found himself 
at a loss when Kood-shoo led him to the doorway 
of the house and pointed up to the sky. 

“Ky-oah-pah says,” the boy declared, waving 
his hand at a glorious aurora that streamed and 
shot in the star-sprinkled sky, 4 ‘that these are the 
dead children playing ball. Why should a child 
playing ball look sometimes like a hunter shooting 
arrows in the sky and sometimes like a piece of 
fire?” 

The angekok stared at the boy. It had never 


230 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


occurred to him that Kood-shoo would question the 
information he had been given. He himself had 
never thought whether the tale fitted the reality. 
Now he waited on the white man’s answer as 
eagerly as the boy himself. The scientist was 
puzzled what reply to make. Few things were 
harder to explain, yet it was necessary to try and 
do so, or the Eskimos would lose faith in the 
ability of the white men to teach them everything. 
The ethnologist stared at the heavens. Rarely 
had he seen an aurora of such beauty. In the 
Whale Sound region, brilliant displays are rare, 
and this one was indescribably inspiring. 

The black arch of the sky between the moons 
had been guiltless of light save for the brilliant 
constellations: Cassiopeia, which the Eskimos 
call the stones of an igloo lamp; the Great Bear, 
which appears to the people of the North as a herd 
of celestial caribou, and the Pleiades, which blaze 
in their sky as a Polar Bear surrounded by a pack 
of dogs. Suddenly the blue-black dome was riven 
asunder by flashing blades of light, as though, in- 
deed, the demons of the sky were warring with 
flaming arrows of blue fire. 

‘ 4 What do they shoot at?” asked the boy. 

But the professor gave no answer, for even as 


ON THE GREAT ICE 


23 1 


they gazed, the myriad arrow-points, with their 
flaming trails, rushed together to form a blazing 
arch, spanning the heavens, bristling with points 
of darting light. 

“It is the musk-ox herd,” Kood-shoo declared, 
“awaiting attack from the sledge dogs of the 
demons of the sky. There!” he cried. “See 
them run!” 

As the boy spoke, the arch broke into a score 
of luminous clouds which shot and ran here and 
there like a confused herd of heavenly creatures. 
For many minutes these patches of light, a deep 
transparent green in color, wavered against the 
darkness* at times so faint that the stars could be 
seen through them. Then, as though at a signal, 
they leaped together to form a canopy of fire. 

Slowly, moment by moment, the edges of this 
canopy began to droop, lower and lower, the center 
still holding its ghostly luminosity, but the edges 
glowing with unearthly radiance touched with pris- 
matic hues like a straying rainbow. Lower and 
lower the edges dropped until they swayed as a 
curtain over the frozen sea, so bright that a re- 
flection could be seen upon the ice below. Down 
and down it fell, while the rainbow edge began to 
shoot great flashes of emerald and crimson to the 


232 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


zenith, and the curtain waved and undulated in 
folds of unimaginable delicacy and beauty. Over 
their heads it passed, so low that the cliffs on the 
further side could be seen tipped with the fire. 
Then, with the swiftness with which it had come, it 
sped into the center of the sky, forming a vast 
corona which faded as they gazed. The stars re- 
sumed their sway over the black sky of the polar 
darkness, and the bleak gleam of the ice forgot its 
radiant guest. Night and Cold resumed their 
winter throne. 

“Are they the arrows of the dead?” Kood-shoo 
asked again. 

“It is a message from the sun,” the ethnologist 
replied, searching his mind for a simple explana- 
tion. “The sun sends many kinds of light and 
strength to his children on the earth and some 
of these rays are so faint that we cannot see them. 
They have a long way to come, Kood-shoo, before 
they reach the air that floats above the ice, the air 
that makes wind. During the long darkness, here 
in the north, the sun is very far away and the rays 
grow tired on the journey. The earth sends out 
strength also, Kood-shoo, which the white men call 
electricity. This strength jumps away from the 
earth to meet the strength coming from the sun, 


ON THE GREAT ICE 


233 

and when they meet, they are so glad they jump up 
and down together and dance for joy.” 

6 ‘ That ’s a mighty ingenious way of putting it in 
Eskimo, Professor,” said one of the other mem- 
bers of the expedition, who had overheard the ex- 
planation, “but I’d like to know what the Aurora 
Borealis really is. I’ve seen the northern lights 
dozens of times, but I’ve never been able to make 
out exactly what caused them. ’ 9 

The scientist turned to his companion with an 
air of relief. 

“It’s a lot easier to tell it to you,” he answered, 
“but when I’ve finished, I don’t know that you’ll 
understand it any better than Kood-shoo here. 
Truth to tell, we don’t know exactly what causes 
the northern lights, and science is only guessing. 
It’s clear, though, that the aurora is some form of 
electrical discharge acting upon atmospheric 
gases. Technically, it seems to be due to an elec- 
tric impulse from the sun, which creates secondary 
cathode rays in the earth’s atmosphere, or which 
ionizes the air to such an extent that electric dis- 
charges from the earth, due to a difference in po- 
tential, are increased and attracted. We know 
that when a particularly bright auroral curtain 
passes over a compass, the needle acts in precisely 


234 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


the same way that it would if a band of upward- 
streaming earth-magnetism were passing over- 
head.” 

All this was unintelligible to Kood-shoo, so he 
returned to his questioning. 

4 ‘Why does it take so many different shapes?” 
he asked. 

“How many shapes have you noticed?” the 
scientist queried in return, again twisting the 
boy’s desire for information into a means for the 
securing of information. 

Kood-shoo wrinkled his forehead and tried to 
think. This white man’s method of making him 
think in straight lines was very tiring. He com- 
menced to count on his fingers. 

“Mostly,” he began, “it looks like a whale’s 
rib.” 

“We call that an ‘arc,’ ” the ethnologist re- 
plied. 

“Sometimes it looks like an old frayed piece of 
sinew-string. ’ ’ 

“That,” the professor said, turning to his com- 
panion, “must be the ‘band.’ Frayed sinew- 
string does look like an auroral band.” 

“Then there are the arrows like the ones we 
saw just now,” Kood-shoo continued, “and then 


ON THE GREAT ICE 


235 


they look as if all the Innuit in the world were 
shooting arrows of fire of different colors; but 
sometimes the arrows are going backwards and 
forwards so fast that they look like dog-traces and 
are fastened to a big whale-rib.” 

“ That’s what we call the ‘fan’ formation of 
rays,” the professor commented under his breath. 

“I’ve seen it, too,” the boy said, “looking like 
a hole in the sky, with flames shooting out on all 
sides of it. That one is the brightest of all, but 
I’ve only seen it two or three times.” 

“The ‘corona,’ ” whispered the professor. 

“And the way that last one finished up,” the 
lad pointed to the sky, “where white bear and 
red bear and green bear skins are being jiggled in 
the sky, you can see heaps of times.” 

The scientist turned to his companion. 

“What do you think of this boy?” he said. 
“Don’t you think there’s the making of a real as- 
sistant out of him? No one has ever taught him 
to observe, and yet, see, he named the five classes 
of aurorae for us just as well as if he’d been 
trained at school.” 

The mate, an old whaler, looked at the scientist 
in surprise. 

“That’s where I think you’re wrong,” he said. 


236 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

‘ ‘ At least, you’re wrong about an Eskimo not being 
taught to observe. He doesn’t observe a lot of 
different things, it’s true, because there aren’t 
many different things for him to observe. But if 
you take him on his own ground, there’s mighty 
little that escapes him. If you doubt it, Professor, 
think of all the men who have starved and died in 
the Arctic just because they couldn’t observe the 
conditions of life around them and make use of 
them as cleverly as the Eskimo. I think you’re 
quite right though, about taking the boy in hand, 
he’d undoubtedly be a big help to you in your eth- 
nological work.” 

When Ky-oah-pah returned to the village, he 
went alone, for Kood-shoo stayed with one of the 
Eskimo families that had built an iglooya near 
Anniversary Lodge, and many and many a day 
he spent with the professor, who taught him scraps 
of English in return for the wealth of information 
that Kood-shoo was able to give concerning Es- 
kimo life. Constantly the scientist wondered at 
the quickness with which the boy learnt and at 
the manner in which he was able to tell what he 
had seen. 

Perhaps Kood-shoo ’s greatest triumph hap- 
pened later in the winter, a week or two after the 


ON THE GREAT ICE 


237 


sun appeared for the first time. He came up to 
the professor, with his eyes shining brightly from 
out the circle of fox-tails that rimmed his face, 
but holding his hands behind his back. 

“I’ve got a present for Ah-poo-mik-a-ninny,” 
he said. 

“Another carving? Perhaps a whale this 
time?” 

Kood-shoo shook his head. Knowing the Es- 
kimo love of guessing, the ethnologist named ar- 
ticle after article, but still he was unable to guess. 
Then, with great pride, the boy took his hand from 
behind his back and slowly opened his mitten. 
On the palm lay a small flat dark-brown object. 
The scientist looked at it in astonishment. 

“What is it?” he said. 

“It is a blanket for Ah-poo-mik-a-ninny’s ivory 
sledge,” he answered. 

The ethnologist took it in his hand and examined 
it curiously, and as he looked, his wonder grew. 

“Where did you get this?” he asked sharply. 

Kood-shoo was surprised at the eagerness of his 
tone. 

“I didn’t get it. I made it,” he replied. 

“Of what?” 

“My hair,” Kood-shoo replied. “You said the 


238 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

white men’s clothes were made of netted hair. So 
I netted my hair.” 

The ethnologist reached into his pocket and 
drew out a magnifying glass, subjecting the object 
to an intense scrutiny. The boy had told nothing 
but the truth. Although the blanket was only 
about six inches long and two and a half inches 
wide, it was absolutely woven of hair. 

“How did you do it V 9 he queried. 

“It was quite easy, though it took a long, long 
time,” Kood-shoo replied. “I pulled out some of 
my hair, where it was longest. Then I twisted 
together as many hairs as I have fingers and glued 
them with cooked oil and soot, just the same as 
Kah-mon-apik showed me for my bow. I tied 
them to a straight piece of bone at one end and 
to another piece of bone at the other end.” 

“ Yes?” put in the professor, seeing that the lad 
paused. 

“Then,” said the boy, “I took the string out of 
my bow and fastened sinews from each end of the 
bow to the two pieces of bone. As the bow 
straightened, it held the strings of hair tight and 
made it easier to hold. Then I put the single 
hairs in and out, the way you showed me, and 
knotted the ends.” 


ON THE GREAT ICE 


239 


The ethnologist stared at the boy. There was 
something uncanny to him in the lad’s deftness 
and intelligence. Especially he was amazed at 
Kood-shoo ’s ingenuity in fixing the frame of a bow 
to hold the warp tight while he wove the weft. 

The very next day, Peary was to start out on an 
attempt to cross the Greenland ice-cap. The eth- 
nologist went to him and showed him the piece of 
weaving. The explorer was not less surprised 
than the museum expert, and, before he left, he 
called Kood-shoo to him. 

“It has come to pass,” he said, “that a man 
goes on his travels. I go to Sermik-soak, and a 
man may never know whether the demons will per- 
mit him to return. I am leaving your little red 
magic here. I have given orders that there will 
be given to your people of Itti-bloo six white men’s 
guns and much powder and shot. With this they 
will be able to kill the nannook easily. I have 
given each of the hunters a white man’s knife. I 
have left wood with which they may build good 
kayaks and sharp spear-points and harpoon-points 
of iron, that- they may kill seals and walrus more 
easily.” 

“Ooh!” the boy cried, in admiration and de- 
light. 


240 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


“I shall not give them food,” the explorer went 
on, “for if the Innuit learn that food may be got 
without hunting, they will cease to hunt ; while if 
I give them weapons which will make hunting 
easier, they will still hunt, but they will always 
be successful. It is true what the black hunter 
of the Kig-ik-tak-miut said to Ky-oah-pah, as the 
story has been told me, The people of Itti-bloo 
shall never again need food . 9 For yourself, Kood- 
shoo, I give you a white man’s gun. Learn to use 
it. Learn to shoot straight. Learn to drive dogs 
like Mirk-tu-shar, the bear hunter of Netuilumi. 
Grow to be big, and brave and strong, and when, 
some day, I go to the land where nothing lives, I 
may take you as a helper.” 

“I know I am going there with you,” Kood-shoo 
replied simply, “Ky-oah-pah saw it, when the feet 
of his breath were out over the ice. ’ ’ 

Peary stared slightly, for as yet this story had 
not been told him, but he placed into Kood-shoo ’s 
hands the promised gun, and sent him out into 
the half-sunshine pleased and proud almost to 
bursting. 

Next day Peary started. From Kah-mon-apik, 
who was one of the men chosen to accompany him, 
Kood-shoo learned the story of that attempt to 


ON THE GREAT ICE 


241 


cross the ice-cap. Peary took with him eight men, 
twelve sledges and ninety-two dogs. Up the ice 
cliffs they climbed, up and np into the sky, reach- 
ing an elevation of 5,500 feet. He had gone one 
hundred and thirty-four miles from camp when a 
blizzard struck them. The Smith Sound Eskimo 
were well used to Arctic cold, but the rigors of the 
Greenland ice-cap far surpass the intense cold of 
the polar seas. The dogs, husky brutes though 
they were, died off from the cold, all ordinary pro- 
tection against frost-bite failed and Peary was 
forced to give up. 

“At seven a. m.” said Peary, writing of this 
storm, “I was out looking on a scene that made me 
sick at heart. Half of my dogs were frozen fast in 
the snow, some by the legs, some by the tails, some 
by both. Two were dead, and all were in a piti- 
able condition, their fur a mass of ice and snow 
driven into it by the pitiless wind. The average 
wind velocity had been forty-eight miles an hour 
and the average temperature fifty degrees below 
zero, falling as low as sixty degrees below. When 
these figures are considered in connection with our 
elevation of some five thousand feet, the unob- 
structed sweep of the wind and the well-known 
fact that ice-cap temperatures accompanied by 


242 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


wind are much more trying to animal life than the 
same temperatures at sea-level, it is believed that 
the judgment will be that this storm beats the rec- 
ord as the most severe ever experienced by an 
Arctic party. ’ ’ 

The dread disease of piblokto broke out among 
the dogs, which makes them absolutely mad. Sev- 
eral ran amuck and had to be shot. The party 
struggled on for a few days after the storm, but 
realizing that it would not be possible to cross the 
ice-cap that year, Peary cached the provisions and 
beat a hurried retreat to the camp, reaching there 
after fearful sufferings with only twenty-five dogs 
left alive of the ninety-two that started. 

All through the spring Kood-shoo vacillated be- 
tween Im-nan-yana and Anniversary Lodge, play- 
ing with little Ahnighito Peary as she grew older, 
helping the professor to make notes on Eskimo life 
and conditions and becoming more and more ac- 
customed to the white men’s ways. One thing, 
however, Kood-shoo could not be persuaded to 
do, and that was to take a bath, nor even to wash 
his face. The scientist tried to urge him to learn 
to swim, but the boy, like all the rest of the Eskimo, 
would not go into the water. None of the tribe 
knew how to swim, although their lives were spent 


ON THE GREAT ICE 


243 


in constant danger of drowning. Kood-shoo’s an- 
swer to the constant urgings of the professor gave 
the true reasons. 

“ Suppose I could swim like a nannook or a 
seal,” he said, “when I tumbled into the water, it 
wouldn’t be any good to me. The water would get 
under the furs I wear. But when the nannook or 
the seal wears the fur, the water cannot get 
through. The water is too cold without a fur 
skin. ’ 9 

The professor was compelled to admit the truth 
of this. In water which is glacier-fed and filled 
with floating ice, no swimmer could live more than 
five minutes ; he would be chilled and cramps might 
come immediately. So, though the boy continued 
to play beside the water, using little pieces of ice 
for rafts, or learning to handle his kayak better 
than his comrades — for the Smith Sound Eskimo 
are not as consummate boatmen as the West 
Greenland Eskimo — he never learned to swim. 

When the sun grew warm and the water became 
more free of ice, after the spring walrus-hunt at 
Pituarvik and after his annual visit with Ky- 
oah-pah to the nesting place of the little auks, 
the smoke of a white man’s ship was seen over 
Melville Bay. It was the Falcon, with supplies 


244 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


for Peary, its members eager to hear news of the 
attempt to cross the Greenland ice-cap. The 
North Water was rough and full of bergs that 
season, but at last the Falcon made her way into 
Bowdoin Bay, passing the grim Pillars of Her- 
cules that guard the gateway to the Pole. 

The supply-ship did not dare to stay long, for 
fear of being frozen in, and she soon returned to 
the white man’s land, bearing Mrs. Peary and little 
Ahnighito to their home in America. Peary would 
not go. Together with Matt Henson, his faithful 
negro body-servant, and Hugh J. Lee, a white 
man, he decided to remain at Anniversary Lodge 
during the autumn and winter and to make another 
attempt in the following spring, using the supplies 
that had been cached in the failure of a few months 
before, together with the additional provisions 
brought by the Falcon. 

As soon as the vessel had cleared and conditions 
were favorable, Peary seized the first opportunity 
to send a party to visit the caches that had been 
made, to dig them out, and erect new signals so 
that they should be easy to find in the next spring 
journey. The party returned without having 
found any caches, but reported that two signals, 
which had stood eight and nine feet respectively 


ON THE GREAT ICE 


245 

above the snow last season, now showed only one 
foot above the snow. 

It was already late in the season, there were 
only a few hours of daylight and ice-cap work was 
perilous, yet Peary set out very early next morn- 
ing. On the finding of those caches, next year’s 
success depended. Two days’ journey brought 
Peary to the signals previously found, but the 
third brought menace. Fog and clouds obliterated 
stars and sky, and a wild wind arose in the dead 
gray emptiness, of the twilight. A living swirl of 
tempest-blast, dense with snow particles, filled the 
Arctic world. For three days and four nights the 
gale raged, driving the snow in long horizontal 
lines. The fine snow needles, far more like dust 
than flakes, made movement impossible and when 
it was at last safe to leave the tent, three feet more 
of snow had fallen. The deposit in the season had 
been unusually large, for the great pole, twelve 
feet high, which had been used to mark the main 
cache in the spring was nowhere to be seen. 

They searched for hours, but night fell and the 
rapidly shortening days forbade longer camping 
on the ice-cap and further search. Nearly a ton 
and a half of provender, including all the pemmi- 
can and all the alcohol was buried in the insatiate 


246 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

maw of the Great Ice and the work of a year and 
a half was blotted out. Yet Peary was determined 
to make the attempt in the spring nevertheless, 
hut with frozen meat for food and kerosene in 
place of alcohol. There was still a faint hope 
that the last cache, where the former expedition 
had turned back, might be discoverable. 

Of the many times that Peary faced death and 
fronted peril and exhaustion, none, not even his 
trip to the Pole, compared with the privations of 
that great dash across the Greenland ice-cap which 
started on April 1, 1895. One after another the 
points of the previous journey were passed, fine 
sunny weather prevailing in the place of the awful 
storms of the year before. But when they reached 
the place where the pemmican and oil had been 
stored, and made a second search, no cache could 
be found. The blizzards of the ice-cap had broken 
off or buried the lofty signal that had been erected 
and the provisions needed for the journey were 
still undiscoverable under the never melting snow. 
They might be right under their feet. They might 
be a mile away. There was nothing to do but to go 
on. This was the country that the Eskimo did not 
understand, and feared, and Peary sent them back. 

“From here,” wrote Peary, “I sent my faith- 


ON THE GREAT ICE 


247 


ful Eskimo allies back to the lodge. Only I and 
they can know how brave and faithful and loyal 
they were. For six sleeps and six long rapid 
marches they had followed me unquestioningly 
into the awful heart of the sermik-soak, where none 
of their tribe had ever dared to go before. Never 
before, even in their longest pursuit of the polar 
bear across the frozen surface of Smith Sound, 
had they been out of sight of the cliffs and moun- 
tains of their savage coast. Yet now, since four 
days back, the highest peaks of those mountains 
had disappeared below the surface of the Great 
Ice and for four days the unbroken steely horizon 
of the frozen desert had circled around them in a 
glittering ring. And now they must hasten back, 
alone, with feverish speed, before a storm could 
obliterate our sledge tracks and leave them, be- 
wildered and bewitched, at the mercy of the dread 
demons of the ‘great ice.’ ” 

The dogs, used to the conditions of ice at sea- 
level, almost exceeded the power of man’s han- 
dling. Nothing but sheer force of human will 
can force a team of dogs into the white nothing 
of the Arctic Sahara. Lee soon became ill and 
the care of the dogs fell upon Henson and Peary. 

“To keep a pack of forty ravenous Eskimo dogs 


248 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

in order during feeding time,” he wrote, “is some- 
thing beyond the power of any two men. We suc- 
ceeded in tying them as usual, in groups of five to 
eight, to stakes driven in the snow about the camp, 
and Henson had nearly completed chopping up the 
daily ration of frozen walrus meat, while, I, with 
whip in hand, tried to keep the yelping brutes 
from breaking loose. 

“But it was impossible to be everywhere at 
once, and, while busy quieting one group, another, 
with a sudden combined rush and the superhuman 
strength which the sight of food inspires in a 
hungry Eskimo dog, tore up the stake to which 
they were fastened and dashed for the pile of 
meat. There was a simultaneous savage cry from 
every other dog, and in an instant, every stake was 
broken or pulled up and a howling avalanche of 
dogs swept through the camp and fell upon the 
meat. Each group being still fastened together 
by their traces, anything about the camp less firm 
than the primeval rocks, came to sudden grief. 

“Whip and voice were equally unheeded and 
Henson and myself were obliged to jump out from 
among the furious animals to save our footgear 
from being torn to pieces by their savage snaps at 
the meat and at each other. Here, before us, were 


ON THE GREAT ICE 


249 


forty savage powerful dogs, the flower of the king- 
dogs and trained bear-hunters of the tribe, mad 
with the struggle for the food and the attacks of 
each other and inextricably entangled and bound 
together by their traces — Kilkenny cats multiplied 
twenty fold. 

4 ‘ Then came the straightening out of the snarl. 
The temperature was twenty-five degrees below 
zero and a strong wind was sweeping through the 
camp, loaded with a stinging drift of snow. 
Silently we went to work, and at the end of five 
hours had the Gordian knots untied and every dog 
secured, except one. He, tangled up and rendered 
helpless by the twisting traces, had been bitten by 
the others till he had gone mad with rage and 
pain, and, with bloodshot eyes, frothing mouth and 
clashing teeth, bit at everything he could reach 
until I was obliged to quiet him with a bullet.” 

On they climbed, reaching an elevation of 7,865 
feet, above sea-level. The dogs could hardly 
breathe in the rarefied air and the three men bled 
frequently at the nose. There was no food but 
raw and frozen meat, and four hundred miles from 
camp, one of the sledges broke. Soon the last of 
the walrus meat was fed to the team, and there 
was nothing left to do but to feed the weaker dogs 


250 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


to the stronger. At five hundred miles out, only 
nine animals remained, three of them so nearly 
dead that they were only fit for dog-food. But, 
before them, lay a new land, never thus seen by 
human eyes before. Peary, standing on the ice- 
cap, saw the peaks and valleys of an unknown and 
unexplored land lying under the yellow sunlight of 
midnight, right at his feet. 

Down over jagged rocks, over glaciers and snow- 
covered cliffs, he went with Henson, but no game 
was to be seen. It was musk-ox country, ap- 
parently, but none of the animals were in evidence. 
A silent and disheartened party returned to the 
tent. Peary decided that return was problematic 
and that life and safety depended on the finding of 
musk-ox. 

“ Never shall I forget that time and scene,” 
wrote Peary; ‘Three exhausted men and nine 
starved dogs, standing there in the gaunt frozen 
desert. These and the glistening snow, the steel- 
blue sky and the cold white sun. Five hundred 
miles in an airline to the nearest human being, with 
insufficient rations for even that distance, yet we 
still were facing the other way.” 

The day after, Henson shot an Arctic hare. The 
two men camped, cooked and ate the entire hare, 


ON THE GREAT ICE 


251 


the first full meal since they had sent away the 
Eskimo thirty-five days before. Next day two 
snowy ptarmigan fluttered up and each of the men 
shot one. Then ! On a little terrace of the cliffs 
they saw a group of black spots which a glance 
through the binoculars showed to be musk-ox. A 
successful shot meant life, for a time at least, while 
failure meant death. 

“Now, as we lay there/ ’ wrote Peary, “ looking 
at the big black animals before us, we had none of 
the sportsmen’s sensation in the presence of big 
game. They were not game for us, but meat! 
Every nerve and fiber in our gaunt bodies was 
vibrating with a savage lust for that meat — meat 
that should be soft and warm, meat into which our 
teeth could sink and tear and rend, meat that would 
not blister lips and tongue with its frost, nor ring 
like rock against our teeth . 9 9 

A moment’s pause and the men were at them. 
The big bull guarding the herd gave a snort and 
stamped his hoof, and on the instant, every animal 
turned and faced them, then formed in line with 
lowered head and horns. 

“We were within less than fifty yards of the 
herd,” continues Peary, “when the big bull with 
a quick motion lowered his horns still more. In- 


252 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

stinct told me that it was the signal for the herd 
to charge. Without slackening my pace, I pulled 
my Winchester to my shoulder and sent a bullet at 
the back of his neck, over the white impervious 
shield of the great horns. Heart, and soul, and 
brains went with that bullet, for I knew that it 
meant our lives. I felt that we were hungry 
enough and wolfish enough that, had the bull been 
alone, we could have sprung upon him bare-handed 
and torn the life-blood from his throat. But 
against the entire herd we would have been pow- 
erless. Once the black avalanche had gained mo- 
mentum, we would have been crushed by it like the 
crunching snow crystals under our feet. 

“As the bull sank upon his haunches, the herd 
wavered. A cow half turned, and, as Henson’s 
rifle cracked, fell with a bullet back of her fore- 
shoulder. Without raising my rifle above my hips, 
another one dropped. Then another, for Henson ; 
then the herd broke and we hurried in pursuit. 

“A wounded cow wheeled, and, with lowered 
head, was about to charge me; again Henson’s 
rifle cracked and she fell. 

“A short distance beyond, the remainder of the 
herd faced about again, and I put a bullet in the 
breast of another bull, but although the blood 



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ON THE GREAT ICE 


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crimsoned his chest and legs, it did not stop him 
and the herd broke again and disappeared over a 
sharp ridge. I had neither wind nor strength to 
follow. Suddenly the hack of one of the animals 
running behind the ridge appeared for an instant. 
I whirled and fired. I did not see the sights, I 
scarcely think I saw my rifle, but felt my aim as I 
would with harpoon or stone and saw the fatal 
crimson stain spring out behind the fore-shoulder 
as the animal disappeared, then I sank down on the 
snow, used up. But I knew that he too was mine. 

“I can scarcely realize as I write these lines, 
what absolute animals hunger makes of men, and 
yet I can say truthfully, never have I tasted more 
delicious food than was that tender, raw, warm 
meat — a mouthful here and a mouthful there, cut 
from the animals as I skinned them. I ate until I 
dared eat no more, though still unsatisfied. 

“Then Henson went back to bring up the dogs 
and sledge. With his return came the uppermost 
luxury of all ! This was to toss big lumps of the 
rich, steaming meat to the faithful shadows which 
we called dogs, till they, too, could eat no more and 
lay gorged and quiet upon the rocks.” 

Life was saved, the Greenland ice-cap was 
crossed, but the conditions required an immediate 


254 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


return by the same route, instead of following 
the shore, for the face of the Academy Glacier 
was unscaleable. The rock region was swept bare 
of snow by an uprising wind and the sledge went 
to pieces. A light sledge was made of skis and the 
party reascended to the ice-cap. At first condi- 
tions favored them, but they were still four hun- 
dred miles from camp when Lee broke down ut- 
terly. On July 6th, two dogs were fed to the re- 
maining seven. On the 7th, the second sledge was 
abandoned. On the 10th, a dog died, leaving six. 
On the 11th, another dog died and Henson and 
Peary had to drag the sledges, the dogs walking 
miserably behind. On the 13th, only four dogs re- 
mained, but the day’s rest had enabled them to 
help to pull the sledge again. 

Rations began to grow terribly short and the 
men were crumpling from weakness, but Peary 
ordered forced marches until the travelers stag- 
gered blindly and blunderingly mile after mile, 
careless whether they lived or died. Still the will 
of Peary forced them on. On July 20th, only two 
dogs were left alive, but a terrific wind, which com- 
pelled a sudden halt, did a good turn in packing 
the snow down hard. Two more good marches 
put them near home, but brought the men to the 


ON THE GREAT ICE 


255 


extreme point of exhaustion. They could barely 
see or speak. Yet the cliffs around home were in 
sight. The last camp on the ice-cap was made 
twenty miles from the moraine near the lodge. 
There were four biscuits left for two meals for 
three men. Only one dog remained and his meal 
consisted of a pair of sealskin hoots and two yards 
of rawhide line. The lodge was reached that night 
and Lee crept tardily in as the first meal was being 
cooked. 

Panik-pah, the only dog left alive, barely sur- 
vived. The rough road down the rocks was too 
much for him. He lay down on the ground in 
sight of the lodge and only after a rest could he 
struggle on to the house. * ‘ When he did come in, ’ ’ 
wrote Peary, “I fed him with my own hands and 
before I had eaten anything myself, with tender, 
unfrozen deer meat, till he was absolutely satis- 
fied and could eat no more.” 

The tales of Peary in the Far North are easily 
one of the richest heritages that the American boy 
possesses, and the lad who does not own in his 
library the books that Peary wrote loses a great 
deal. But nothing else will so truly show the ex- 
plorer and the hero, nothing will touch a boy’s 
heart closer than Peary’s love for his Arctic dogs. 


256 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

Let him close the story of the Greenland ice-cap 
conquest in his own words : 

‘ ‘ The strain of the grim race was ended. We 
had distanced our grisly competitor. We had 
reached those unspeakable luxuries, food and rest. 
But my noble dogs had been less fortunate. 

“ Every true man and every true woman loves 
a noble dog and there are no more splendid dogs 
in all the world than those magnificent brutes of 
Whale Sound. Perhaps my readers may think me 
prejudiced. I have a right to be. They saved my 
life and the lives of my two comrades. 

“ Powerful, savage brutes, as one would expect 
from dogs whose ancestors were wolves, yet they 
are susceptible to kindly treatment. 

‘ ‘ Never were dogs or men more faithful than 
these poor brutes. Day after day they struggled 
back across that awful frozen desert, fighting for 
their lives and ours; day after day they worked 
until their last ounce of work was gone from them, 
and then fell dead in their tracks without a sound, 
forty-one of them out of the forty-two with which 
I had left the lost cache. 

“Faithful, noble servitors, Nupsah, Kardahso, 
Komonahpik, Ahgotah, Elingwah, and the rest, 
never shall I forget you ; and my only consolation 



Breaking a Puppy to Harness. 



After a Long Day’s March. 

(From Dr. Hatton’s “Among the Eskimos of Labrador,” published by 
J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, Pa.) 






ON THE GREAT ICE 257 

is the knowledge, that, like ourselves, you did not 
suffer pain. The starvation was so gradual that, 
when at last the end came and your exhausted 
limbs refused to move, your bright eyes closed and 
your faithful lives went out upon the savage heart 
of the Great Ice, your end was as painless as our 
own would have been, had it not been for you.” 


CHAPTER YHI 


THE DEMONS CHEATED OF THEIR PREY 

During the period of fine weather on the ice- 
cap, before the Eskimo had been sent home from 
the cache, Peary’s attention had been attracted to 
a crude knife he had seen in the hands of Kah-mon- 
apik, of which the blade seemed to be made of iron. 
He questioned the hunter closely about it. At 
first Kah-mon-apik gave evasive replies, but when 
Peary showed him that he knew the knife must 
have been recently made, the hunter admitted it. 
He explained that he had ground down the tool 
from a “heaven-bom-stone” that had been found 
on an island not far from Im-nan-yana. 

True, it was Kood-shoo’s secret, and Kah-mon- 
apik was loth to tell the tale, but, knowing how 
closely the boy had been associated with Peary 
during the past two years, he finally was per- 
suaded to tell his leader all that he knew concern- 
ing the Woman and the Dog. He related, with 
great gusto, how Ok-pud-ding-wah and the people 
of Netlik had broken off the head of the Woman 
258 


CHEATING THE DEMONS 259 

and how it had plunged into the waters of Smith 
Sound, concluding with Ok-pud-ding-wah’s own 
words : 

“The Demons of the sea have taken the Head 
of the Woman, to give it back to the demons of the 
sky !” 

When Peary returned to Anniversary Lodge, 
therefore, and the terrible exhaustion and weak- 
ness had disappeared, when his swollen legs and 
feet had almost become normal again and the grip- 
ing pains of the famine-wrecked stomach were be- 
ginning to diminish, the explorer called Kood-shoo 
and learned from him the exact location of the 
meteorites. The boy was eager to help Peary and 
anxious to do everything in his power for the 
white men who had been so kind and who had made 
happy the entire tribe of his people. So he led 
Peary and a party to the island where the meteor- 
itic iron had been found. An excursion caused the 
discovery of a third and larger mass, which they 
nicknamed the Tent, several miles away. The 
supply vessel, the Kite, already was in Bowdoin 
Bay and in spite of Peary’s eagerness to get home 
to America, he would still have made an attempt 
to get the meteorites, but the ice conditions were 
highly unfavorable. The explorer determined to 


260 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


take one or more of them to America if he came up 
to Smith Sound the summer following. 

Next year, heading an expedition for the Ameri- 
can Museum of Natural History, and with many 
eminent scientists aboard, Peary made special 
preparations for the removal of the meteorites. 
In spite of its weight, the Dog was easily put on 
board, but the Woman presented greater difficul- 
ties. When, after weeks of toil, the great piece of 
iron actually was put on a cake of ice twenty by 
forty feet in size and over seven feet thick, which 
had been towed to Meteorite Island for use as a 
ferry, the ice was unable to endure the weight and 
broke in the middle. Fortunately, to prevent any 
such contingency, Peary had taken the precaution 
of having every available tackle in the ship fast 
to the meteorite. In spite of this, down sank the 
Woman, down toward the bottom of the bay. 

“The Head is calling! The Head is calling !” 
cried Ky-oah-pah and he scrambled off the ship 
into his kayak as fast as he could go. 

For a moment indeed it seemed as though the 
demons of the sea were beckoning, and as the 
tackles took the weight, the ship heeled over with 
a heavy list to starboard. 

Even the white men held their breath. Would 


CHEATING THE DEMONS 261 


the good ship Kite turn turtle? Very little more 
strain would be more than she could bear. But 
the vessel had been built staunch and powerful, 
solidly re-enforced for bucking the ice-floes and 
battling with the rigors of the Arctic seas, so her 
stability held true. She took the weight of the 
meteorite on her tackles and held it fast. There 
was a shout of relief. The ropes were run to the 
winches, and, inch by inch, the iron Woman came 
up from the black waters of the Bay until it was 
swung inboard and lowered into, the ship’s hold. 
There was no further delay. Steam was got up 
at once and the vessel sailed out and through the 
Melville Bay ice pack, intending to return next 
summer for the monster, the Tent. 

With Peary away in the white man’s land next 
winter, Kood-shoo returned to Eskimo life as he 
had known it before the Falcon came, save that he 
had a gun with which to shoot, and that his brain 
rioted with the ideas that Peary and the ethnol- 
ogist had planted there. Alone of all the Eskimo, 
this boy had gained an insight into a life far dif- 
ferent from that of the Smith Sound region. His 
friends and companions only wondered dully at 
the doings of the white men, without ever a 
thought of copying them, but Kood-shoo made 


262 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


them his own. As the scientist had said, there 
was something in the boy that differentiated him 
from his fellows. He seemed destined to make a 
valuable assistant. 

One day in the summer, when the sea-birds had 
all returned to their nests, and the Crimson Cliffs 
were alive with tens of thousands of kittiwakes 
and burgomaster gulls, when Peary was expected 
and eager eyes watched the horizon for the smoke 
of the white man’s ship, Kood-shoo went out with 
his gun to shoot. Remembering the explorer’s 
advice, the boy had become an expert marksman, 
and he practiced assiduously. It was seldom, now, 
that he used his bow and arrows, but he was not 
yet ready to give them to the ethnologist, though 
his friend had wished to take them back to the 
American Museum as an exhibit of Eskimo work- 
manship. 

Strolling up towards the caribou-plateau, the 
boy noticed, in the air, flying in a straight line 
through the myriads of wheeling sea-gulls, a bird 
such as he had never seen before. Nearer and 
nearer it came, flying straight and low. Drop- 
ping on one knee and raising his rifle to his shoul- 
der, Kood-shoo fired. The bird stopped and fell, 
partly recovered itself and poised a moment, 


CHEATING THE DEMONS 263 

and then swooped dizzily to the ground not a hun- 
dred yards away from the lad. 

Kood-shoo jumped to his feet and ran to catch 
the feathered stranger. The bird fluttered along 
the ground for a few yards and then fell over, 
dead. He picked it up and looked at it. Never 
had he seen a bird like this. In color it was blue 
and black, the wings quite deeply colored, and its 
bill was short and straight, unlike the curved 
beaks of the sea-birds of the region. And then 
his glance fell on the bird’s leg. 

He stared, as well he might. 

Around the bird’s leg was a metal ring. 

Out from the north and with a metal ring around 
its foot ! 

This was magic manifest and palpable. 

Looking still closer, Kood-shoo saw some marks 
upon the ring, and spelling out the letters that 
were engraved on it, he read : 

Aee’s Pxp, 1896. 

The few words of English that Kood-shoo had 
learned gave him no clew to this inscription. He 
hurried home to the igloo in Netiulumi as fast 
as he could go, to ask Kah-mon-apik and Ky-oah- 
pah whether either of them had ever seen such 


264 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

a bird. He gained no satisfaction there. The 
prize was as strange to the angekok and to the 
hunter as it was to Kood-shoo, and the lad waited 
impatiently the coming of the white men to solve 
the mystery. Meanwhile, he buried the unknown 
bird in a cake of ice, where the sun could not reach 
it, that it might stay frozen and in good condition 
until the white men’s ship appeared. 

At last, late in the summer, battering her way 
through the ice with vicious eagerness, the Hope 
appeared. As soon as she anchored in the waters 
of Bowdoin Bay, Kood-shoo exhumed the bird and 
hurried down the shore to his kayak. He scram- 
bled on board, but his friend the ethnologist was 
nowhere to be seen. Peary, however, though busy 
with a thousand details, saw Kood-shoo and gave 
him greeting. The boy hurried to him. 

“Peary-soak,” said the boy, ignoring all pre- 
liminary speech, “this bird came flying over my 
head a few sleeps ago and I shot him with the 
gun you gave me. He’s got a ring on its leg made 
of the cooking-pot metal of the white men. ’ ’ 

With an air of light interest the explorer reached 
out his hand for the bird, which Kood-shoo held to 
him. His expression changed, however, as he 
took quick note of its shape and scrutinized the 


CHEATING THE DEMONS 265 

metal band around the bird’s leg, reading aloud 
the letters : 

“Aee’s Pxp, 1896.” 

“Andree!” he exclaimed. “One of Andree ’s 
pigeons ! ’ ’ 

He beckoned to a burly man near by. 

“Captain,” he called, “here’s word of An- 
dree!” 

Every one within hearing hurried forward to 
learn the news, for the Andree Balloon Expedition 
to the North Pole was a matter of keenest interest 
all over the world during the year 1897. Peary 
examined the quill feathers to which a record 
might have been attached, but there was nothing to 
be found. There was no message. 

“Only a stray!” he announced in a disap- 
pointed tone. 

There was a gesture of regret among the mem- 
bers of the party, and one of the visiting scientists 
said, 

“That looks a little like trouble. Don’t you 
think so, Commander ?” 

Peary looked thoughtful. 

“Not necessarily,” he said, “the bird might 
have got away, but on the whole I should regard 
it as ominous. Andree wouldn’t have released 


266 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


his pigeon without a message, if everything was 
going well. Of course, the bird might have lost 
the message, but they’re generally fastened too 
well for that.” 

“It was queer,” the Captain said, “what hap- 
pened to the other two birds.” 

“Well,” the explorer rejoined, “you can’t de- 
pend much on carrier pigeons in these altitudes.” 

All this was unintelligible to Kood-shoo, and 
presently the boy asked, 

“What’s Andree?” 

Peary turned to the lad, realizing that it was 
essential to inform the Eskimo concerning An- 
dree’s expedition, for if a pigeon had reached 
Whale Sound, there was more than a possibility 
that the balloonist had passed over the Greenland 
ice-cap, and perhaps had suffered disaster on the 
Great Ice . 1 

“The white men,” he said, “are anxious to get 
to the very middle of the ice, Kood-shoo, a place 
where the sun goes round in a ring and where the 
moon goes round in a ring.” 

i The incident herein described, of the pigeon found in Green- 
land, is fiction, and used for the purposes of this narrative. All 
the rest of the information concerning Andree is historic and 
authentic. 


CHEATING THE DEMONS 267 

“Is it the place where everything is downhill ?” 
asked Kood-shoo. 

“What do you mean by that?” queried the ex- 
plorer promptly. 

“I don’t know,” the boy replied, “only, a long 
time ago, when the feet of the breath of Ky-oah- 
pah were out on the ice, he said that he had seen 
you at a place where everything was down a hill. ’ ’ 

“It is an omen, Commander,” said the captain. 

“Grant that it may be one!” the explorer re- 
joined. He paused a moment and then continued. 
“For many darknesses, many more darknesses 
than the oldest Innuit, or the oldest Innuit’s father 
can remember, the white men have tried to reach 
this middle point with a ship, but the ice has 
stopped every vessel. They have tried to reach 
it with dogs and sledges, but the middle is very 
far away and there is no food. Torn-uk-soak, the 
demon of ill, Ko-yo-nah, the demon of the north 
and It-a-goo, the demon of hunger, have driven 
them back. Many have died, Kood-shoo, and no 
one yet has found the middle. 

“Last sunshine-time,” the explorer continued, 
“three white men, led by Andree-soak, tried 
to find the middle by flying in the air like a bird. 


268 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


The white men made an oomiak-soak which could 
float in the air as the seal-skin hag floats on the 
water when the awick has been harpooned. The 
white men call a sky oomiak-soak like this, a 
‘ balloon . 9 But though Andree waited all one 
sunshine-time on the edge of the sea of ice, the 
wind blew all the time from the north and it was 
the south wind that he wanted. So the time of 
the long days passed and the darkness came again. 
Three white men and the oomiak-soak that floats 
in the sky had to go back to the white man’s land 
until the sunshine-time came again. 

‘ ‘ Early next sunshine-time, Andree returned 
with the balloon to a place called Spitzbergen and 
on July 11, the south wind came at last. The 
igloo, which was fastened to the balloon and 
which hung below it as a hawk bears his prey in 
his talons, carried a kayak for two men, a sledge, 
and food for half a year. The thongs which held 
it down to the earth were cut and the balloon rose 
in the air, grew smaller and smaller, rose over the 
top of a mountain range in the distance and dis- 
appeared.” 

“Did the three white men reach the middle?” 
cried Kood-shoo. 

“We do not know as yet,” the explorer an- 


CHEATING THE DEMONS 269 

swered. “Forty-six hours after the balloon was 
cut away, Andree sent off a carrier pigeon, a 
brother to one that you hold in your hand, 
Kood-shoo, and this pigeon carried a message 
which said that Andree had traveled nearly two 
hundred miles in less than two days and was still 
going toward the north, though much more slowly. 
The message said, too, that this was the third 
that had been sent by carrier pigeon. ’ 9 

“Where were the other two?” 

“They had not yet returned to the white man’s 
land,” said Peary, “when we left Disko Island. 
It is now more than a month since Andree left and 
he may have reached America, which is the op- 
posite side of the sea of ice from the point at 
which he started. I know no more. But, Kood- 
shoo,” he continued, “your finding of this pigeon 
may be a sign that Andree may have met Ko-yo- 
nah the demon of the north. He may have met 
evil winds, he may have fallen on the Great Ice, 
he may be adrift upon an ice-floe, or he may have 
found the middle and be home in triumph. We 
shall not know until we return to the white man’s 
country, perhaps not even then.” 

The saying was prophetic. From that day, 
July I3th, 1897, when Andree sent off his third 


2JO 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


carrier pigeon, while his balloon was careering in 
the frosty air over the ice, not a word or a sign 
from the expedition has ever reached civilization. 
The fate of Andree remains a mystery, a mystery 
all the more inscrutable because such extraordi- 
nary pains had been taken to ensure the discovery 
of some remnants of the expedition. He carried 
a number of buoys of solid cork, sheathed with cop- 
per, which could defy every form of Arctic pres- 
sure and which would float out of the Polar sea 
on the southward currents in case the balloon was 
wrecked. He took with him carrier pigeons which 
should be able to fly back home. He carried a 
boat, if the balloon fell in the water, and a sledge 
if it descended on the land. He had food in plenty 
and a perfect equipment for Arctic life. 

Twenty years have passed, but not a buoy, not 
a pigeon, not a fragment of wreckage of any kind 
has ever been found. It seems certain that An- 
dree could not have fallen on the Polar ice. Had 
he landed on the Greenland ice-cap, where there 
is absolutely no food, no animal or bird life of any 
kind, he might have perished, and then the balloon, 
the car and all the equipment would be buried, 
probably forever, under the eternal snows. Or if 
he crossed the Polar region and landed on the as 


CHEATING THE DEMONS 271 

yet unexplored and undetermined Crocker Land 
(1917) he might have perished likewise. 

Two stories have been brought from Arctic 
Canada w T hich have been thought to suggest that 
Andree crossed in the vicinity of the Pole. One 
was brought in 1900 by a fur-trader from the bor- 
ders of the Arctic Ocean. The trader said 
that an Indian had arrived at his post the year 
previously, with a tale of having met some Eskimo 
who owned brass instruments, metal cooking 
utensils, many ropes and a great deal of water- 
proof cloth. These Eskimo said that a great 
boat had appeared in the sky and that three men 
had stepped out. A fight had followed and the 
Eskimo had killed the white men, who shot at them 
with their guns. 

The other story was brought by a missionary 
from the same region, in 1910. He reported that 
he had actually met a tribe of Eskimo with such 
articles in their possession. Neither the Indian, 
nor the missionary, however, brought with them a 
single relic to substantiate the story, and the mis- 
sionary, who was sent back to parley with the 
tribe, could not find them again. Since 1910 many 
explorers, notably Stefansson, have explored this 
region, but have heard nothing to confirm these 


272 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


two reports. The fate of Andree and his com- 
panions is a problem as yet unsolved. 

The Hope stayed but a short time off Cape York 
and then went directly to Meteorite Island to re- 
move the “Tent” or the “Iron Mountain,” as it 
was also called. The task was unbelievably diffi- 
cult, so heavy was the block of iron. A large num- 
ber of the Eskimo were engaged to help in the la- 
bor, their trust in Peary overcoming their fear of 
the vengeance of the demons. Yet it was all but 
incredible how laborious and difficult was the task. 
Even after the Iron Mountain had been dug out 
from the hole which it had made for itself when it 
fell, after jacks had been put under it and the 
huge meteorite at last was made to move over a 
small ridge to a place on the beach where the 
water was deep enough for the ship, it resisted 
every inch of the way. 

“It was interesting, though irritating,” wrote 
Peary, “to watch the stubbornness of the monster 
as it sulked and hung back to the last inch. Under 
the strain of the two powerful chain blocks and 
urged by the resistless lift of the jacks, the huge 
brown mass would slowly and stubbornly rise on 
its side, and be forced into a position of unstable 
equilibrium; then every one, except the men at 


CHEATING THE DEMONS 273 

the chain blocks at the foot of the hill, would stand 
aside. A few more pulls on these, then cable and 
chain straps would slacken, the top of the meteor- 
ite would move almost imperceptibly forward, the 
stones under the edge of revolution would be- 
gin to splinter and crumble, then, amid the shouts 
of the natives and our own suppressed breathing, 
the Tron Mountain’ would roll over. When it 
struck the ground, the harder rocks would elicit 
streams of sparks from its brown surface before 
they crumbled, the softer ones would dissolve in 
dust and smoke, and the giant would bury itself 
half its depth in the earth with the slow, resistless 
motion of a hydraulic punch cutting cold iron, 
then lunge suddenly forward a few feet, throwing 
up a dam of earth and stones before it like the 
terminal moraine of a glacier. 

4 ‘Never have I had the terrific majesty of the 
force of gravity and the meaning of the terms 
‘momentum’ and ‘inertia’ so powerfully brought 
to me, as in handling this mountain of iron. No 
purchase or appliance which we could bring to 
bear on it, outside of the jacks, made the slightest 
impression on it. When lowered slowly upon 
heavy timber blocking by the jacks, it settled re- 
sistlessly into the wood until it seemed as if it 


274 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


would never stop. The timbers creaked and 
groaned in every fiber, and in the immediate 
vicinity of its pressure, the structure was entirely 
destroyed and it became a mass of incoherent 
fibers. If the meteorite slipped and fell for half 
an inch, as it frequently would, in spite of every 
precaution, it would bite into the steel rails like 
a punch and the rail itself would sink into the 
timber beneath, if near the middle, or crush 
through it, if near the end. The inherent deviltry 
of inanimate objects was never more strikingly 
illustrated than in this monster. Had the matter 
been a subject of study for weeks by the celestial 
forge-master, I doubt if any shape could have 
been devised that would have been any more com- 
pletely ill-suited for handling in any way, either 
rolling, or sliding or lifting. 

‘ ‘ There were many incidents of the work to sug- 
gest the supernatural, even to the most prosaic 
mind. The dogged, sullen obstinacy and enormous 
inertia of the giant against being moved ; its utter 
contempt and disregard of all attempt to guide 
or control it when once in motion, and the remorse- 
less way in which it destroyed everything opposed 
to it was demoniac. 

“I remember one particularly striking occasion. 



Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History. 


The “Tent” or “Iron Mountain.” 

Famous meteorite, transported from the Arctic to New York by Peary, 
weighing 36^ tons, the largest in any museum in the world, now in 
the American Museum of Natural History, New York, and 
christened “ Ah-ni-ghito,” after the explorer’s daughter. 

(Note size of museum attendant’s cap, on the pedestal, for comparison.) 



Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History. 


Cross-Section of Meteorite. 

Polished surface, treated with weak acids, showing the curious designs 
or “Widmanstatten figures” which reveal the celestial origin of 
the “firestones from the sky,” found by the Smith Sound Eskimo. 

No substance belonging to the earth shows these figures. 









































































































































■ 


















































































































































CHEATING THE DEMONS 275 

It was the last night of our stay at the island, a 
night of savage wildness as is possible only in 
Arctic regions. The wild gale was howling out of 
the depth of Melville Bay through the Hope's rig- 
ging, and the snow was driving in horizontal lines. 
The white slopes of the hill down which the 
meteorite had been brought showed a ghastly gray 
through the darkness; the fire, round which the 
fur-clad forms of the Eskimo were grouped, 
spread its bright red glare for a short distance ; a 
little to one side, was a faint glow of light through 
the skin wall of a solitary tupik. Working about 
the meteorite was my own little party, and in the 
foreground, the ‘Savik-soak,’ the ‘Iron Mountain,’ 
stood towering above the human figures about it, 
and standing out black and uncompromising. 

“While everything was buried in the snow, the 
Savik-soak was unaffected. The great flakes van* 
ished as they touched it, and the effect was very 
impressive. It was as if the giant were saying: 
‘I am apart from all this, I am heaven-born, and 
still carry m my heart some of the warmth of 
those long-gone days before I was hurled upon 
this frozen desert.’ To strengthen this fancy that 
the meteorite still held some of this celestial fire 
and feeling, if a sledge ill-aimed in the darkness 


276 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

at wedge or block, chanced to strike it, a spouting 
jet of scintillating sparks lit the gloom, and a deep 
note, sonorous as a bell, a polar tocsin, or the half- 
pained, half-enraged bellow of a lost soul, an- 
swered the blow.” 

There, near the shore, the great meteorite was 
bidden stay for its last winter in the Arctic dark- 
ness, for the ice was driving in at the Hope and a 
cold spell set the Melville Bay icebergs into furi- 
ous conflict with each other. Fog and the shorten- 
ing days added to the ship’s peril and when a 
storm broke up the iceberg barrier that acted as 
breakwater against the ice pack the Hope had to 
be driven out at full speed and with the utmost 
haste to prevent being nipped and sunk in the icy 
waters of Melville Bay. Twice, during the 
winter, Kood-shoo went to Meteorite Island, in his 
heart envying the heaven-born-giant which was 
destined, the next summer, to go to the white 
man’s land which the boy so longed to see. 

The work of next summer, however, did more 
to teach Kood-shoo the power of civilization than 
anything else that could have been imagined. 
The monster meteorite had been brought to the 
shore, the year before, but there still remained the 
problem of putting it on board the ship. When 


CHEATING THE DEMONS 277 

the Hope reached the natural dock to which the 
meteorite had been taken, a bridge was built from 
ship to shore. This was made of two huge six- 
teen-inch oak timbers, sixty feet long, spanned 
and re-enforced, with trusses at every point. 
Railroad rails were laid twinned on these timbers. 
A massive timber car, which had been built in 
America and carried on the vessel, was rup out on 
these rails and the two great sixty-ton and one 
hundred-ton hydraulic jacks were set at work. 
Fraction by fraction of an inch they raised the 
Iron Mountain until the car could be slid under it. 
The jacks then lowered the meteorite gradually 
upon the car. Wood and metal crunched and sank 
under the vicious weight, but keen engineers had 
built the bridge and when the steam winch was 
set in motion, the stone began to creep in short 
jerks over the rails along the bridge to the ship. 
Every Eskimo except Kood-shoo left the vessel. 
They remembered the fate of Ok-pud-ding-wah 
and could not believe that the demons would allow 
the “ heaven-born-stone ” to leave the place where 
the spirits of the sky had destined it to fall. Ky- 
oah-pah made a speech of farewell to the stone, 
begging the spirits to remember that the Innuit 
were not guilty of the sacrilege. Even yet they 


278 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

expected disaster. But the white men won and 
the meteorite was lowered safe at last into the 
ship’s hold. (August 20th, 1897.) 

“Yet my risks and uncertainties were not yet 
ended,” wrote Commander Peary. “During our 
stay at Meteorite Island, the young ice had formed 
in every interval of calm, the last day’s snow- 
storm had cemented everything with a thick 
leathery stratum of slush, and the almost continu- 
ous soft easterly wind had been steadily compact- 
ing the icebergs and forcing them nearer and 
nearer to the shore. Just before starting, Cap- 
tain Bartlett and myself reconnoitered the bay 
from the top of the island, and saw that there was 
but one practicable route of escape and even by 
that, we should be obliged to force a barrier of 
bergs. A short distance from the shore of the 
island, we entered a lead formed by the tide and 
soon reached the barrier which separated us from 
comparatively open water. This barrier, though 
narrow, was formidable, made up entirely of bergs 
and heavy berg fragments. 

“At first we tried to squeeze through, but with- 
out success. It was evident we must ram a pass- 
age, in spite of our ugly load. Additional timber 
braces were hurriedly put about the meteorite, 


CHEATING THE DEMONS 279 

and it was with considerable anxiety that I 
watched the effect of the first blow, as the Captain, 
from the foretop, conned the rushing ship straight 
at the keystone of the harrier. As the how struck 
the ice, it rose upon it with a harsh grating lift, 
and then, with a crash and quiver, the Hope came 
to a dead stop. The meteorite trembled and the 
ballast underneath groaned and settled slightly, 
hut no serious results followed, and as there was 
no alternative, the engines were reversed and we 
backed out for another blow. 

“Blow after blow was delivered, big pieces of 
ice were broken off and sucked out by the draught 
of the ship’s backing, till at last the massive wedge 
of the Hope’s iron-claw bow could be entered be- 
tween the last two bergs of the barrier, and, with 
engines going at full speed, we gradually forced 
them apart. The entire engine-room force was 
stoking like demons, black smoke poured in clouds 
from the Hope’s funnel, the propeller was whirl- 
ing at ninety revolutions per minute and the Hope 
herself was pulsating like a human heart. Inch 
by inch we squeezed between the frozen blue rocks 
on each side, rasping the iron bark’s sheathing 
from stem to stern, and as the sternpost cleared 
the bergs, the flying propeller blades struck once 


280 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


or twice, sending throughout the ship a resonant 
clangor, fierce as the bellow of fire bells on a 
winter’s night. It was our paean of escape.” 

Still the Hope was not ready to sail for America. 
Peary wanted to call at Bowdoin Bay, and as the 
water was clear outside the berg barrier, he 
steamed into Smith Sound. There, a few days 
later, a storm broke, and the Hope ran back and 
forth, barely able to hold her own against being 
driven out into the icy clutch of Kane Basin. 
Peary seized the opportunity to visit Cape Sabine 
and Camp Clay, the scene of the Greely tragedy? 
being the first white man to enter the place since 
the rescue in 1883. Kood-shoo went ashore with 
him, and, with Peary, looked on the low wall of 
stones which marked the site of Camp Clay. The 
rescuing party had taken back most of the relics 
of the expedition, but there was still on the beach 
the remains of a boat which had been used for 
fuel. Moreover, the sharp eyes of the lad caught 
sight of a small round object half -hidden under the 
stones that had been piled up. He picked it up 
and held it out silently to Peary. 

It was a lead pencil, little injured by the 
weather, and with a point still good enough for 
writing. 


CHEATING THE DEMONS 281 

The explorer put it back into the young fellow’s 
hand. 

4 ‘Keep it, Kood-shoo,” he said, “ there is no 
need for me to take this back to the white man’s 
land. Greely, gallant soul, is still alive, and there 
is no point in awakening tragic memories. Keep 
it, my boy, with the broken piece of meteorite I 
gave you and the magic in your pouch that I have 
never asked to see.” 

“Tell me of Greely,” asked the boy, “I didn’t 
know that the white men had been on this side of 
the water, too.” 

‘ 1 Yes, ’ ’ answered Peary, < ‘ they were here. The 
bones of many of them are still here. They made 
a splendid fight, though when the United States 
sent them to Lady Franklin Bay for a survey, 
no one dreamed that they were passing into a 
chamber of death. They made their camp far 
north of here, beyond Kane Basin, on the other 
side of Kennedy Channel, in a bay west of Hall 
Basin, called Lady Franklin Bay. There a winter 
camp was built, Fort Conger, and the men lived 
happily all the winter. In the spring (1882) 
Lieutenant Lockwood, with eleven men, sledged 
north and secured the highest northing that had 
been made up to that time. ’ ’ 


282 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


“They didn’t reach the middle?” 

“No, they were still a long way off,” the ex- 
plorer answered. “But they had the honor of 
being the nearest. That summer (1882) the sup- 
ply ship, the Neptune , tried to reach Fort Conger 
but was blocked by ice. Her captain left a cache 
of provisions at Cape Sabine, as agreed, and re- 
turned to the white man’s land.” 

“How did Greely know about it?” asked the boy. 

“He didn’t. But he could see that the ice was 
impassable that season, so he spent the summer 
and autumn in hunting, getting food for next win- 
ter. He was sure that during the following year 
the most earnest efforts would be made to rescue 
him, so he settled down at Fort Conger for the sec- 
ond winter. Many sledge journeys were under- 
taken and Greely made good maps of all the re- 
gion. A large amount of marvelously valuable 
work was done and in all those two years not a 
single man died. Greely' looked cheerfully for- 
ward to rescue and return. ’ ’ 

“Did no one come for him that year, either?” 
asked Kood-shoo. 

“Yes, two vessels went to the rescue, the Pro- 
teus, which had taken Greely north, and the Y an- 
tic. But the Y antic was driven to the east coast 


CHEATING THE DEMONS 283 

and could not force Kane Basin, and the Proteus 
was nipped in the ice, just off Cape Sabine, and 
crushed to pieces. The men salvaged what they 
could and made a cache of the provisions on Cape 
Sabine, then made their way, in whale-boats, back 
to Upernavik.” 

“ And Greely knew nothing about it?” 

4 ‘Nothing. He waited until the summer was 
more than half over and then abandoned Fort 
Conger. He fastened and sealed everything so 
that the records of his work would be found if 
ever any white men came up so far again, and 
started south for Cape Sabine in the hope of find- 
ing relief and food. 

‘ ‘ The boats were small and the ice in Hall Basin 
and Kennedy Channel blocked their path con- 
stantly. The clothing of the men had worn out 
and they had been unable to get furs in Green- 
land. Shoes, even, were made out of canvas. 

‘ ‘ Sometimes rowing and sometimes being towed 
by the little steam launch, but more often dragging 
their boats over the floes, they worked their way 
down, picking up one small cache of food after 
another, which they had left on their journey 
north, but traveling very slowly. With a party 
of twenty-five men, food soon became exhausted. 


284 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

They had to desert the launch and one boat when 
they started across the ice-floes of Kane Basin. 
It took them a day to advance one mile. 

4 4 The march was one of torture. The men were 
poorly clad, and their feet so ill-shod that they 
might almost have been naked. Sleet and snow 
fell constantly all through August and the raving 
gales of Kane Basin whipped freezing spray over 
them continuously. The soldiers suffered terri- 
bly. 

“ ‘Elison is a pitiable sight,’ wrote Sergeant 
Brainard, one of the men, 4 with his face distorted 
and frozen and his limbs ice-like and useless. He 
repeatedly implored me to kill him that the others 
might be saved.’ 

4 4 Five days later they were still struggling over 
the floes when a hurricane came up and swept the 
piece of ice on which they were camped into the 
very center of Kane Sea, seventeen miles from 
land. Hope again seemed lost, when the gales 
veered and drove them within four miles of the 
land, still on their piece of ice-floe. Another at- 
tempt was made to reach land, but the tempest 
revived its rage and they lay motionless in their 
sleeping bags for eleven days more, unable to 
escape from their floe. 





Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History. 


Lockwood Starting on His Farthest North. 

Advance party of the ill-fated Greely expedition. Of these four men 
all died of starvation except Frederick, the rearmost behind the sledge. 



Ka — 





Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History. 


Sledging from Fort Conger. 

The bleak snow plains and barren rock slopes of Grinnell Land, where 
eighteen out of twenty-three American soldiers and two Eskimos 
perished from exposure and want. 

The plates on this page are printed from historic negatives, being two of 
those found by Peary at Fort Conger, sixteen years after Greely 
had been compelled to abandon the post in agonies of privation. 



CHEATING THE DEMONS 285 

“When at last they reached land, at Eskimo 
Point, the men were so exhausted that further 
march was impossible. A rough hut was put up 
and the men allowed to rest after the privations of 
the last month. On the completion of the house, 
Greely found he had food for thirty-five days or 
short rations for fifty days. Two of the strongest 
men were sent on to Cape Sabine to see if there 
was news of the Proteus. They returned with the 
report of the disaster to the ship. Greely moved 
his men on to the cape, picking up all the caches 
that had been made and prepared to spend an- 
other winter as best he could, hoping to live until 
the following spring. Four men were sent on a 
journey to Cape Isabella, further along the coast, 
to get the meat cached there from the wreck of 
the Proteus. 

“On the sixth day out they neared Cape Isa- 
bella. Sergeant Frederick wrote of that day: 
‘We took our sledge and equipment with us part 
of the way and then the only suitable place that 
we found to drop the equipment was on the sum- 
mit of a glacier where we intended to camp the 
coming night. We went on with the sledge only, 
as our track was very tortuous, and moreover, we 
had not a foot of level traveling. Huge masses of 


286 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


ice from twenty to forty feet in height were heaped 
together, around which the fierce winds of winter 
had heaped the drifting snow. In crossing these 
ridges our sledge would frequently capsize and 
roll over and over : sometimes the sledge would be 
half buried in the soft snow, in which case its 
liberation would he attended with great difficulty. 

“ ‘We reached Cape Isabella about two o’clock 
in the afternoon and after ascending about 1,000 
feet, we found the meat. We picked up the cache 
at once and started for the sledge, which we had 
left at the extreme point of the cape. We were 
in hopes that we should reach the camp all right, 
but we traveled all day on a cup of tea and worked 
hard and had to face a strong western wind. We 
found to our sorrow, after traveling twelve or 
fourteen hours and reaching our camp at the 
glacier, that Elison had frozen both his hands and 
feet. 

“ ‘We had no shelter of any kind, nor were we 
able to light a match or keep the lamp burning, 
and without a mouthful of warm food we retired 
to our frozen sleeping-hag, which was no more and 
no less than a sheet of ice. I took one of Elison ’s 
hands and placed it between my knees and Rice 
took the other and in this way we drew the frost 


CHEATING THE DEMONS 287 

from his frozen limbs. The poor fellow cried all 
night with the pain. This has been one of the 
worst nights I ever spent in the Arctic/ 
“Conditions grew worse in the next two days. 
The men could not drag the sled with Elison’s 
weight on it and he could not walk. ‘We tried to 
keep Elison in front of us,’ the record states, ‘but 
it was no avail. He would stagger off to one side 
or the other and every moment the frost would 
eat its way deeper into his flesh and we stood 
helpless at his side. So we fastened a rope to 
his arm and then to the upstander of the sledge 
and the three of us took to the traces and tried to 
make time. Every few rods the poor fellow would 
fall, and then, sometimes before we would see him, 
we would drag him over the cutting ice or through 
the snow for several feet. No one can imagine 
how that poor man suffered/ ” 

“Why didn’t they leave him?” queried Kood- 
shoo. 

“That is not a white man’s way,” the explorer 
answered. “A white man never deserts a friend, 
and these were American sailors, too.” 

“Is that ‘onn-er’?” the boy queried. 

“Yes,” the explorer answered, “that is honor.” 
Seeing that the lad was content, he resumed his 


288 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


story. i ‘It was no longer possible to move Eli- 
son, and if he were left, he would die. So two of 
the men got into the sleeping bag with the injured 
man, to keep him warm, and the fourth hurried off 
to the camp for relief. The sleeping bag soon 
grew so hard that the men could not turn and had 
to lie in one position for eighteen hours. Fortu- 
nately the fourth man reached camp safely and 
brought relief, though the main party was not 
much better off. 

“The hut was a miserable hovel, ill-built, cold, 
and facing north. Elison grew worse, one of his 
feet dropping off entirely without his even know- 
ing it for several months. Scurvy and starvation 
began to claim their toll of death. The long Arc- 
tic night gave place to day, but the men were too 
weak to hunt. Now and again some game came 
near, and this was shot. A few shrimps were 
caught. Each week the men grew weaker — and 
fewer. By June the food supply had been re- 
duced to moss and a small strip of sealskin around 
one of the sleeping bags. The men had left the 
foul and damp hut and had put up a tent, to take 
advantage of the sun, but no one had strength 
enough to fasten it securely. On June 19th, the 
tent was half blown down, pinning Greely and two 


CHEATING THE DEMONS 289 

men to the ground. They were thus without food 
and water. No one had sufficient strength to lift 
the canvas off them. 

“On the third day after the collapse of the 
tent, one man, Long, fancied he heard a steam- 
boat whistle. With the strength of desperation, 
blindly groping, he clambered to the low ridge 
overlooking the Sound, and saw a ship or a 
famine-born-mirage of a ship, he could not tell 
which. He fell twice in his descent to the beach. 
Boats, real boats were coming, bringing food. In 
answer to shouted questions, he pointed over the 
ridge. 

‘ ‘ The relief party sped over the hill. The tent 
was down. No one in it could move. One of the 
members of the relief party took a knife, cut a 
slit in the canvas, and looked in. One man, with 
dropped jaw and glassy eyes, seemed dead. Eli- 
son, a wreck of a man without hands and feet, 
had a spoon tied to the stump of his right arm. 
Greely was on hands and knees, with long and 
matted hair, his form a skeleton and every joint 
bulbous and swollen. He could not stand. The 
other three were little better. There was not a 
morsel of food in the tent but two cans of a re- 
pulsive-looking jelly made by boiling strips cut 


290 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


from sealskin clothing. One day more they might 
have lived, two days would have seen the end of 
most of them and three days would have ended all. 
Seven men were left alive and these seven had 
suffered perhaps more than any men who starved 
through an Arctic winter. Only six reached the 
United States, for Elison died on the ship.” 

Kood-shoo looked down at the lead pencil that 
he still held in his hand. 

“This is magic, too, then,” he said, “it seems 
that I was born for magics. Is it true, Peary- 
soak, that the demons may help a man?” 

“It might be true,” the explorer answered. 

“My first magic,” the boy said, “told of Frank- 
lin-soak and his men. Did they fail?” 

“No,” Peary answered. “They died, but they 
succeeded. They were the first to find the North- 
west Passage.” 

“This magic tells of Greely-soak and his men. 
Did they fail?” 

“No,” Peary answered, “many died, but they 
succeeded. ’ ’ 

“Out on the winter ice,” the lad went on, “Ky- 
oah-pah with the feet of his dream went traveling 
to 4 where it is all downhill. ’ Can that be the mid- 
dle, the middle that Andree-soak was seeking?” 


CHEATING THE DEMONS 291 

“It might be,” said the explorer, wondering 
what was coming. 

“Then you will succeed, also,” said Kood-shoo. 

‘ ‘ Did Ky-oah-pah say that ? ’ 9 

“He said it,” answered the boy. 

Peary turned and looked out over the sea. 

“And did he say that I should die, as Franklin- 
soak and some of the men with Greely died?” 

“No,” answered Kood-shoo, “some one will die, 
but it will not be you. ’ 9 

“It is a dream,” said Peary firmly, “but while 
one dreams, it is good to dream well,” and he 
fell silent. 

Never a word did he speak until they were 
aboard the Rope again. When the time came for 
the Eskimo to leave, Peary came and shook hands 
with each, but to Kood-shoo, he said, as they 
clasped hands, 

“I shall look for you, Kood-shoo, when I come 
back to the North. And, if he will, let old Ky- 
oah-pah dream me that dream again.” 

Treasuring the little lead pencil that he had 
found on the site of the Greely hut, at Camp Clay, 
and which Peary had told him to keep, Kood-shoo 
went contentedly home to Itti-bloo where Ky-oah- 
pah again was to spend the winter, leaving, of 


292 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


course, from time to time, for the seal-hunting, 
and making three iglooyas during the season. 

Safety was not yet assured to the Hope, with 
the meteorite still in her hold. Truly it seemed 
that Torn-uk-soak was near them, with malevolent 
devices seeking to wrest the stone away, and that 
Ko-yo-nah, the demon of the north, had little in- 
tention of allowing the white men to take the 
heaven-born-stone to the south-land. A storm 
smote them from the north, an inferno of wind- 
whipped spicules of ice and water, a tempest that 
seemed to hold solidity, so powerful and so bitter 
was its blast. 

Time and again the Hope rolled as though she 
would never rise again and the superstitious mem- 
bers of the crew gave themselves up as mere vic- 
tims to the cruel demons of the north. Great was 
their fear that the iron would break loose and 
crash through the planking of the ship. 

Yet seamanship and engineering had given of 
their best and the vessel and her cargo stood fast 
against the worst that could blow from the Polar 
seas. Fog and evil weather hampered all the voy- 
age, yet the Hope reached New York, where a hun- 
dred-ton crane, belonging to the U. S. Navy, lifted 


CHEATING THE DEMONS 293 

the monster meteorite like a feather and landed it 
softly and gently on the quay. 

It lies on a concrete pedestal in the main en- 
trance hall of the American Mnsenm of Natural 
History, New York, the greatest and most historic 
of its kind. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE NORTH POLE 

The next summer found Kood-shoo big and 
strong and of even better standing in tbe tribe. 
Among the Eskimo of the Smith Sound region, 
that isolated people, for so long a time only known 
vaguely to white men as the “Arctic High- 
landers,^ the lad had been foremost in absorbing 
new ideas from Peary and from the various ex- 
perts of the American Museum of Natural His- 
tory, who had accompanied the explorer. Among 
other things, he had seized with avidity upon the 
games and athletics taught him by various mem- 
bers of the expeditions that had visited Whale 
Sound, and which were always strongly urged by 
the leaders as a means of keeping the ships’ crews 
in physical trim during the long dark winter. 

The two principal native sports of the Innuit 
men, finger-pulling and alternate blows upon the 
shoulder to see who could hold out the longest, 
had palled upon Kood-shoo. He had learned to 
wrestle, using several of the approved “holds,” 
294 


THE NORTH POLE 


295 


and had picked up quite a good deal of the art of 
boxing, so that he was able to hold his own against 
the most powerful hunters of the tribe. 

He was the proud owner of a baseball, replacing 
the crude sealskin sphere filled with moss which 
had been a plaything of his boyhood, and he had 
some knowledge of the great American national 
game. Little though he realized it, the boy was 
putting into effect Peary’s ideas of training, those 
ideas which enabled the great explorer to give to 
his own country, the United States, the richest 
geographical triumph of the world. 

It is little understood that Peary won the Pole 
by an understanding of Arctic conditions, an ex- 
perience and a skill therein, even more marvelous 
than his courage and his pertinacity. And, since 
the Pole belongs equally to every American boy, 
it is worthy of the keenest attention to determine 
the ways by which it became possible to hoist the 
Stars and Stripes at 90° N., when all the nations 
of the earth had tried and tried in vain. 

The foundation of Peary ’s work lay in his 
handling of the Smith Sound Eskimo, the tribe of 
Kah-mon-apik and Ky-oali-pah, of Ok-pud-ding- 
wah and little In-nook-shee-ah, that one tribe 
which inhabits the only oasis in the north, a small 


296 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

people, consisting only of two hundred and fifty- 
three souls, all told, men, women and children. 
These Eskimo know but one teacher, and that 
teacher is Peary. They know hut one guide, and 
that guide is Peary. They know but one benefac- 
tor, and that benefactor is Peary. The black 
hunter of the Kig-ik-tag-miut had prophesied 
truly. From the time that the white men bought 
the little red magic, the village of Itti-bloo knew 
no hunger, nor did any of the dwellers in those 
groups of igloos that lie between Etah to the 
north and Im-nan-yana to the south. 

Veritably this is an oasis, walled in by impass- 
able barriers on every side. The Smith Sound 
Eskimo cannot migrate to the north, to the south, 
to the east, nor to the west. The boundaries of 
their dwelling places are fixed. There they must 
dwell, there they must hunt in order that they may 
live, and there, in course of time, they die. Only 
one terrible danger faces them — civilization! If 
well-meaning but unscientific white men leave them 
alone, if all their guides and teachers hereafter 
are as well-informed in the real needs of Arctic 
life and as firm as Admiral Peary, they will flour- 
ish and prosper continually, a happy nation that 
has no history. 


THE NORTH POLE 


297 


It has been said that they cannot migrate away 
from their own land, but much of the meaning of 
life around Smith Sound will be misunderstood 
unless the one main fact be grasped that it is an 
oasis. Less than a hundred miles wide from 
east to west and two hundred and thirty-five miles 
long from north to south, with two-thirds of it 
uninhabitable, the populated region is small. It is 
bordered on the west by the waters of Smith Sound 
and Kane Basin, filled with bergs and swept by 
storms, unfit for kayak navigation. Moreover, 
the Eskimo of this tribe do not possess oomiaks 
or large boats, like other Eskimo tribes. To the 
north, the great Humboldt glacier, many miles in 
width, sweeps down into Kane Basin and makes 
the sea-ice a continuous wall with the Greenland 
ice-cap. To the east lies the sermik-soak, the ice- 
cap, where nothing dwells but the demons, the per- 
petual wind and the drifting snow. To the south 
lies Melville Sound .and the wide sweeping 
stretch of Baffin Bay, filled with the ice pack, not 
to be crossed save by steam vessels especially 
built for the purpose, while the land side to the 
south-east is again protected by a series of glaciers 
sweeping down into the sea. There is no game on 
the ice-cap, none in Ellesmere and Grinnell Lands 


298 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

across the Sound, even if the Eskimo could reach 
them. These two hundred natives live, forever, 
menaced by ice on every side. 

Yet, in this oasis, there is plenty of food and 
life. In the summer-time many little valleys are 
partly cleared of snow, where, on their southern 
exposure, mosses and flowers grow, and white 
hares and blue foxes scamper. On the plateau of 
Kan-gerd-look-soak, grazes a herd of caribou, too 
few to serve for a constant food supply, yet of vast 
value for their skins and for pieces of their 
antlers which are used for weapons such as the 
barbs of fish-spears. Sea-birds nest in millions 
on the Crimson Cliffs and the other frowning rock 
sentinels that face the ice-filled sea. Ever and al- 
ways the seals and walrus bask on the ice or swim 
below it, fish may be speared all the year through 
and the narwhal is a frequent visitor. Occasion- 
ally a whale is seen. Uncontaminated by civiliza- 
tion, disease has not reached this little tribe, and 
though few live to grow old, it is because the strug- 
gle for existence is so continuous and many are 
killed upon the ice. 

For twelve consecutive years, from 1891 to 1902, 
Peary lived all year or a part of every year with 
the Smith Sound Eskimo. In 1905 and 1906 and 


THE NORTH POLE 


299 


again in 1908 and 1909 he wintered with the tribe. 
No monarch has ever held a more absolute sway, 
and none has been more thoroughly beloved than 
Peary. He is their father and they are his chil- 
dren. Much of the secret of the great explorer’s 
success lies in those eighteen years of gradual 
upbuilding of the character of his assistants as 
well as the steady advance, farther and farther 
north, of bases of supply. 

Eighteen years ! Withal, every year meant 
constant study of the details of travel. The Peary 
type of sledge was a model developed year by year 
and tested under the most rigid of experimental 
schools — that of constant use over rough ice. De- 
vices for cooking and warming had to be perfected. 
The clothing was the result of intensive study as to 
the best furs to keep out cold, the best patterns 
and the best methods of sewing them. The food 
question had been worked out with infinite detail 
to determine what gave the most nourishment and 
the greatest amount of body heat in proportion to 
its weight. 

Nor were the dogs forgotten. For eighteen 
years the breed had been steadily improved. 
Larger and better dogs were bred. With a more 
ample food supply in the Smith Sound region, 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


300 

there was but little need for the natives to use 
dog-food, and the animals thrived on plenty of 
walrus meat. Even so small a matter as dog 
harness was thoroughly investigated and changed 
so that the traces pulled better and strained 
the sledge-dogs less. A form of canvas webbing 
was substituted for the raw-hide harness, in order 
to do away with the constant danger of the dogs 
eating the harness and sledge-traces. 

Eighteen years of experience on the ice, year 
after year over the same trail ! The frozen north 
is a sealed book to the most experienced explorer, 
but Smith Sound, Kane Basin, Kennedy Channel, 
Hall Basin, Robeson Channel, and Cape Sheridan, 
whereon abuts the Polar sea, are as familiar to 
Peary as the landmarks around a man’s own home. 
Black Angahsuk holds no terrors for the Kite, the 
Falcon, the Windward or the Roosevelt , and Cape 
Alexander, the “ blowing place,” is to Peary only 
a beacon of safety, not a lure of danger. The dis- 
coverer of the North Pole, together with Captain 
Bartlett, the British skipper of the Roosevelt, 
knew ice conditions thoroughly. In all the cen- 
turies of Arctic exploration no man has ever had 
one-tenth of the training and the preparation of 
Peary, and the prize went, if not necessarily to the 


THE NORTH POLE 


3 QI 


best man, certainly to the man best fitted in experi- 
ence, and in personality, second to none. Others 
dared equally, but not with equal understanding. 

The summer following the safe trans-shipment 
of the great Iron Mountain, Peary went north 
again in the Windward. He was determined to 
make the dream of Ky-oah-pah come true, but he 
knew well that the North Pole could not be con- 
quered by a blind dash. He felt that it could be 
reached only by gradual stages, pushing ever far- 
ther and farther north, landing caches at every few 
miles of the journey and finally establishing a 
large depot of provisions at some extreme north- 
erly base. Greely had found Fort Conger a good 
base, and Peary determined to make that one of 
his half-way stations. 

That season the ice was massed and the Wind- 
ward could not be forced into Kennedy Channel, 
while Kane Basin conditions were terrific. The 
Windward was frozen in for the winter near Cape 
Sabine, and in the December moon, at a time in the 
month when there was moon-light for only four 
hours of the twenty-four, Peary started for Fort 
Conger, with one white man, with Matt Henson 
and four Eskimo, among them Kah-mon-apik, 
driving thirty dogs. Kood-shoo had begged to be 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


302 

allowed to go on the trip, but the commander said 
he was too young. 

To any man but Peary, the trip would have been 
impossible. For any other man but Peary, the 
Eskimo would have refused to go. Greely, when 
trying to cover exactly the same route in summer 
and daylight, found that it was almost beyond 
human power, and then he was returning south. 
Peary tackled it in the middle of the Polar night, 
and he was advancing north. One of the Eskimo 
became so terribly numbed in the biting wind that 
Peary had to dig a cave in a snow-drift and leave 
him there with another Eskimo to look after him 
and nine of the weakest dogs. 

“The moon had left us entirely now,” he wrote, 
“and the ice-foot was utterly impracticable, but 
we groped and stumbled through the rugged sea 
ice as far as Cape Baird. Here we slept a few 
hours in a burrow in the snow, then started across 
Lady Franklin Bay. In complete darkness and 
over a chaos of broken and heaped-up ice, we 
stumbled and fell and groped for eighteen hours, 
till we climbed upon the ice-foot of the north side. 
Here a dog was killed for food. 

“Absence of suitable snow put an iglooya out 
of the question, and a semi-cave under a large cake 


THE NORTH POLE 


303 


of ice was so cold that we could stop only long 
enough to make tea.” (It is worthy of note that 
Peary ascribes much of his success to a special 
arrangement of his own invention for making 
boiling tea quickly.) “Here I left a broken sledge 
and nine exhausted dogs. Just east of us, a floe 
had been driven ashore and forced up over the ice- 
foot till its shattered fragments lay a hundred feet 
up the talus of the bluff. It seemed impassable, 
but the crack at the edge of the ice-foot allowed us 
to squeeze through; and soon after we rounded 
the point I was satisfied by the ‘feel’ of the shore 
— for we could see nothing — that we were at one 
of the entrances of Discovery Harbor, but which, I 
could not tell. 

“Several hours of groping showed that it was 
the eastern entrance ; we had struck the center of 
Bellot Island and at midnight on January 6th we 
were stumbling through the dilapidated door of 
Fort Conger. A little remaining oil enabled me, 
by the light of our sledge cooker, to find the range 
and the stove in the officers’ quarters, and, after 
some difficulty, fires were started in both. When 
this was accomplished, a suspicious wooden feel- 
ing in my right foot led me to have my kamiks 
pulled off, and I found, to my annoyance, that both 


304 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


feet were frozen. (Amputation of seven toes 
later proved to be necessary.) Coffee from an 
open tin in the kitchen and biscuit from the table 
in the men’s room, just as they had been left over 
fifteen years before, furnished the menu for a sim- 
ple but abundant lunch.” 

From Fort Conger Peary brought down Gree- 
ly’s records, which had been undisturbed since 
the Camp Clay tragedy, and much of the Fort 
Conger material became the property of the 
American Museum of Natural History. Many 
photographic negatives had remained in the Arc- 
tic for fifteen years and showed little sign of spoil- 
ing. Peary’s injuries to his feet kept him from 
doing much sledge work that summer and he spent 
the succeeding winter in Etah, the most northerly 
settlement of the Smith Sound Eskimo and the 
most northerly inhabited village in the world. 
All through that summer and winter, under his 
direction, parties sledged to and from Fort Con- 
ger, establishing extensive caches of food on both 
sides of the ice. 

In April, 1900, Peary started for the Pole but 
was stopped by a wide lead of water. He turned 
landwards and used his dogs and supplies to 
round the northerly end of Greenland, discovering 



Copyright by Harper & Bros. 

Capt. Sverdrup’s Polar Bear Trap. 

Photograph taken by the Nansen expedition on the Norwegian explorer’s farthest north. This combination of young ice 

and small pack ice with a lead in the background and small hummocks beyond, is 
typical of the easiest stages of Arctic travel. 



THE NORTH POLE 


305 

Cape Morris Jesup, the most northerly point of 
land yet (1917) definitely known to exist. He 
spent another winter at Fort Conger and started 
north again in 1901. Ice conditions were unfavor- 
able. In 1902, Peary set out on a dash to the Pole 
but was again forced to turn back. He had 
reached the farthest northing so far made from 
the American base. Having spent nearly five 
years continuously in the Arctic, the explorer re- 
turned home. 

Again in 1905 Peary returned to the north. 
Kood-shoo was twenty-three years old now, and 
he gained the prize for which he had so long been 
seeking, the right to be one of the men chosen by 
Peary. In all the Smith Sound tribe this is the 
chiefest honor, for not only is it an evidence that 
the man so chosen is one of the few best in the 
tribe, but it also ensures riches, for Peary always 
made it a point to reward handsomely such of the 
natives as went with him. 

The Roosevelt , one of the strongest and best ves- 
sels that ever entered the polar ice, was the ship 
chosen. Under Captain Bartlett’s handling, and 
with its special construction for smashing ice, the 
Roosevelt did what no vessel before was able to 
do, fought through the Kennedy Channel, Hall 


306 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

Basin and the Robeson Channel into the Polar 
Sea. Kood-shoo wintered at Cape Sheridan with 
the Peary party. The boy was beginning to speak 
a little English, now, though most of the members 
of the expedition could talk Eskimo. 

Next spring, when some hours of daylight had 
returned, but before the heat of the sun was great 
enough to rot the ice, Peary took his party along 
the north shore of Grant Land to Cape Hecla, and 
on to Cape Moss, from which the dash was made. 
Kood-shoo was a member of this party and was 
anxious to be selected as one of the chosen few 
for the final dash, but, though he acquitted him- 
self most creditably, when the party came to a 
wide lead which was an open sheet of water dur- 
ing the summer months, Peary sent the boy home. 

The lead was a mile and a half wide and the 
five days’ delay here until the lead should freeze 
over was a serious blow to success. As soon as 
the ice was strong enough to bear, the sledges were 
sent across at break-neck speed, with light loads. 
Peary hoped that a second trip could be made over 
the new ice to bring over the rest of the supplies, 
but before the sledges could cross and return, the 
lead had opened again. The party advanced with- 
out support, with good traveling for a short dis- 


THE NORTH POLE 


307 


tance, and then came a terrific storm which im- 
prisoned them for six days, during which the ice 
on which they were drifted over seventy miles 
eastwards. These two delays had caused a loss 
of eleven days, the weather was appreciably 
warmer and the leads of water, instead of closing, 
were gradually widening. 

By April 21st, Peary had reached 87 degrees 6 
minutes, the farthest north ever attained by white 
men up to that time, the previous northing having 
been made by Captain Cagni and the Italians 
under the Duke of Abruzzi. This Italian expedi- 
tion was one of the pluckiest that was ever made in 
the Arctic, the men reaching that far northing 
without furs, merely in woolen clothing, canvas 
tents and ordinary forty-pound sleeping bags. 

For nearly three centuries Great Britain held 
the Arctic honor, Henry Hudson reaching 80° 23' 
in 1607. The 81st parallel was crossed by Scoresby 
in 1806, the 82nd parallel by Sir William Parry in 
1827 and the 83rd by N. H. Markham in 1876. 
Lockwood and Brainard of the Greely party won 
11 minutes further, giving the honor to America 
in 1882. A long step forward was made by 
Nansen, who left the Norwegian flag at 86° 14' in 
1895. Under Captain Cagni, the Duke of the 


308 the polar hunters 

Abruzzi’s party gave Italy the supremacy in 1900 
with a northing of 86° 34'. Then the United 
States forged ahead when Peary in 1906 set the 
Stars and Stripes at 87° 6'. 

Having placed the American flag “ Nearest the 
Pole,” Peary set off home again, with barely 
enough food to reach land, even though he were 
not stopped at any point. If he were — then fa- 
mine was sure, with possible death from starva- 
tion. At 84 degrees, the big lead at the edge of 
the continental shelf which had stopped Peary in 
1902 and which again had held him up on his out- 
ward journey, the same at which I^ood-shoo had 
been turned back, barred his return. While wait- 
ing for a chance to cross this lane of water, five 
more days elapsed. A brief return of cold made a 
thin skin over the ice, far too thin to bear a man’s 
weight if he stood still, but Peary decided to make 
the dash. With every man shod with snowshoes, 
with the sledges scattered and lightened of every- 
thing but food and the dogs kept running widely, 
a wild rush was made over the crust. 

So thin was the ice that the movement of the 
men sent up in front of them a billow of ice, like 
the wave at the cut-water of a vessel. The slight- 
est mishap meant disaster. Should a man trip 


THE NORTH POLE 


309 


or a dog jump aside, tlie ice would break and 
probably the whole sheet would crumble. For two 
miles, death’s hand hovered over them, but the 
sublime daring of the risk and the marvelous skill 
and dexterity of every man of the party, both in 
snowshoeing and in driving the dogs, took them 
across. 

They were over, indeed, but during the five 
days they had been compelled to wait, the ice had 
drifted still further eastward, so that when they 
reached land they were not only ten days’ pro- 
vision short, but they also were a hundred miles 
to the eastward of their base, and found them- 
selves at Cape Neumeyer in Peary Land. Their 
case was desperate, for the supplies were all but 
gone and they were many days’ journey from 
Cape Sheridan, where the nearest cache was lo- 
cated, without food either for themselves or for 
the dogs. 

Then good fortune, so rare in the Arctic, inter- 
vened. Out on the beach of Nares Land, far to 
the north of their accustomed range, six musk- 
oxen were seen feeding. Weak and famine- 
stricken as the men were, the sight of meat stimu- 
lated them to utmost activity. Every one of the 
animals fell a prey to their guns and the gaunt 


3 IQ 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


men and the equally gaunt dogs found their first 
full meal for many days. Yet, despite this good 
fortune, the issue was still in doubt, for musk-ox 
meat lacks nourishing qualities and stamina, pos- 
sibly because the food of the musk-ox, being moss, 
itself has little nutrition. It is for this reason 
that the Eskimo of Smith Sound seldom, if ever, 
attempt any excursions after musk-ox, though at 
rare intervals the animals have been observed. 
With this meat, however, Peary managed to regain 
the Roosevelt , though terribly exhausted and over- 
worn. 

One year’s rest, or rather, one year’s prepara- 
tion followed, and then Peary started for what he 
had determined would be his final attempt. “I 
knew,” he wrote, “it was my last game upon the 
great Arctic chessboard. It was win this time or 
be defeated. 

“The lure of the North! It is a strange and 
powerful thing. More than once I have come back 
from the frozen spaces, battered and worn and 
baffled, sometimes maimed, telling myself that I 
had made my last journey thither, eager for the 
society of my own kind, the comforts of civiliza- 
tion and the peace and serenity of home. But, 
somehow, it was never many months before the 


THE NORTH POLE 


311 

old restless feeling came over me. Civilization 
began to lose its zest for me. I began to long for 
the great white desolation, the battles with the ice 
and gales, the long, long Arctic night, the long, 
long Arctic day, the handful of odd but faithful 
Eskimo who had been my friends for years, the 
silence and vastness of the great, white lonely 
North. And back I went accordingly, until, at 
last, my dream of years came true.” 

In the materialization of this dream, Kood-shoo 
played his part, as, years before, on the hunting 
trip over the great ice in the shadow of Kangah- 
suk, the rock lover of the North Water, Ky-oah- 
pah told him that he would do. 1 

Kood-shoo was on board the Roosevelt, when on 
August 18th, in a storm of wind and sleet, she 
parted company from the Erik and turned her 
steel-snubbed nose into the worst piece of tortured 
water in the world, the stretch from Cape Alex- 
ander to the Polar Sea. Before her loomed that 
frost-fortified barrier of ice with ragged and 

1 This story of the North Pole is accurately told in all details, 
save that, for the purposes of the narrative, Kood-shoo is substi- 
tuted for an Eskimo nicknamed “Harrigan” who was on the 
Marvin supporting party, the writer feeling that the four Es- 
kimo who accompanied Peary to the Pole, Oo-que-ah, Oo-tah, 
E-ging-wah and Seeg-loo should be given the historic honor, with- 
out change of name. 


312 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


tabled bergs, seventy feet thick below for every 
ten feet above, churning and grinding and butting 
each other down the grim channel carved out of 
the primitive gneiss rocks of the earth’s crust, an 
apparently resistless charge of the Arctic’s heavy 
cavalry against one puny vessel. On the ship were 
sixty-nine human beings, whites and Eskimo, and 
two hundred and forty-six snapping, howling dogs. 
From Etah to Cape Sheridan! Kood-shoo never 
forgot that journey, that conquest of the most 
perilous passage in the Seven Seas. 

The tides were incredible and yet there was no 
water to be seen, nothing but writhing ice, groan- 
ing and thundering in its agony. At the ebb tide 
a narrow crack appeared between the shore and 
the moving pack and the Roosevelt forced her way 
between them, her mighty engines driving the 
blunt steel wedge-bow on. When the flood tide 
flowed to the south, the vessel sheltered in some 
niche of shore ice or behind some point of rock, 
often anchoring with grapple-irons to a grounded 
berg lest she be driven south or caught in the 
crushing nip that nothing can resist. One man, 
and only one man in all the world, could pilot a 
ship through that channel and that man was Peary. 
He had walked on foot eight times almost every 


THE NORTH POLE 


3i3 


foot of that coast line, and three times, every 
inch of it. He knew every indentation, every 
place where icebergs of a certain depth would 
ground, and the maelstroms that the tides make in 
that seething frozen witch-cauldron were as fa- 
miliar to him as the shoals of his home port are 
to the skipper of a fishing schooner. 

While on the Roosevelt, Kood-shoo, and every 
other Eskimo aboard, built his own sledge, the 
raw materials being provided. These Eskimo, in 
every case, were men that had been trained under 
the Peary system. They were the pick of the 
tribe, and had learned to be craftsmen in every 
detail that had to do with the Polar work, in addi- 
tion to being skilled as hunters and dog-drivers. 

The Eskimo women on board, all selected for 
their ability, were set at work making new clothing 
for the party out of picked furs. The white men 
were always interested in watching them as they 
held the fur with their toes and sewed the seam 
over and over with both hands, away from them, 
not towards them, as white women do. Their work 
is marvelously strong, and the jumping sinew of 
the caribou, which is used in place of thread, never 
rots, nor breaks, no matter how often it may be 
wetted, or wdiat strain is put upon it. 


3H 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


The passage of Robeson Channel was one con- 
tinuous siege of menace and danger. A dozen 
times the Roosevelt was on the point of being 
crushed. Icebergs to which she had been made 
fast were hooked by drifting floes and torn away, 
while masses ten thousand tons in weight came 
driving at the ship. But when the Roosevelt was 
not like a snake, worming her way between the 
pack and the shore; or like a leviathan, treading 
down the smaller floes ; she was a battering ram, 
and many a huge berg split in two as the steel- 
shod bow rose up and crushed down and through' 
the masses of seemingly impenetrable blue-white 
rock. 

Once, indeed, the Roosevelt was forced on the 
rocks, the vengeful pressure of the ice squeezing 
against her vitals. One ship, and one ship alone, 
the Roosevelt , built to withstand such crushing, 
could have endured the nip for ten seconds. As it 
was, all hands were called to dynamite the ice that 
the pressure might be released. Holes were 
drilled in furious haste, and as the charges ex- 
ploded the huge floe split and drifted down the 
channel with a rumble of defeated defiance. 

This unceasing battle, night and day, with never 
a momenta pause, lasted for fourteen days, but 


THE NORTH POLE 


3*5 


at the end of that time, the Roosevelt had rounded 
Cape Sheridan and lay near shore, in the shallow 
water inside the ice-floe barrier and close to the 
ice-foot. This meant that within a measurable 
distance of the base from which the dash to the 
Pole would be made, there was the largest and 
most complete equipment that had ever reached 
the borders of the Polar Sea, an equipment so com- 
plete that two or even three years’ successive at- 
tempts might be made with the supplies provided. 
Every contingency was foreseen, every prepara- 
tion completed. 

Throughout the autumn, constant sledge trips 
were made, both for observations and for hunting. 
Peary himself, on an exploration trip to Clements 
Markham Inlet, shot some caribou, finding them 
to be a hitherto unknown species, now named the 
“Peary Caribou,” and wounded a polar bear 
which was tracked down and killed by the two Es- 
kimo of his party. Peary also shot several musk- 
oxen and returned after a journey of seven sleeps 
with several thousand pounds of meat, and some 
magnificent specimens, some of which are now in 
the American Museum of Natural History. The 
other members of the party sledged provisions 
to Cape Columbia, a point beyond Cape Hecla, 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


316 

which had been selected by Peary as the starting 
point for the dash to the Pole in the spring. 

On February 15th, 1909, Bartlett left the ship 
for Cape Columbia, to hunt for a few days and 
stay there until the rest of the party arrived. The 
three divisions following him took full loads there. 
Peary was to follow a week later. 

Great was Kood-shoo ’s delight on learning that 
he had been chosen to be with Bartlett’s party, 
the pioneer party, picked for the hard work of 
prospecting the trail. The two other Eskimos 
were Poo-ad-loo-nah and Ooo-que-ah, the latter 
a young fellow who expected to win a bride as the 
result of the trip and who was eager to make a 
record for himself. All the parties gathered at 
Cape Columbia during the end of February and 
on February 28, 1909, the dash, or better the 
drive, to the Pole was begun. 

Bartlett, on snowshoes, started out to pick the 
route ahead of his three men, each with a lightly 
loaded sledge, Poo-ad-loo-nah in the lead, then 
Oo-que-ah, and Kood-shoo last. The sledges were 
given light loads because the pioneer division had 
the task of finding the best road through the hum- 
mocks and of breaking the trail. Peary gave this 
work to Captain Bartlett as he was the most ex- 


THE NORTH POLE 


3i7 


perienced ice-master save for the leader himself, 
and because the explorer wanted to save all his 
strength for the final dash. Besides this, by 
bringing up the rear, Peary was able to make 
sure that there were no accidents or desertions 
among the divisions. 

Borup, with three Eskimo, four sledges and 
thirty-two good dogs, acted as an advance support- 
ing party. His duty required him to accompany 
Bartlett for three marches, his heavy sledges fol- 
lowing the trail that had been definitely prospected 
and set by the pioneer party with its light sledges, 
and after three marches he was to cache the food 
and return to Camp Columbia in one long forced 
march with empty sledges. 

The main party which started the day after 
Bartlett and Borup (March 1, 1909) consisted of 
five divisions, with Commander Peary in the rear. 
This most formidable force that ever attacked the 
Arctic sea in a quest for the Pole contained twenty- 
four men, nineteen sledges and one hundred and 
thirty-three dogs. The start, moreover, was 
eight days earlier than the start of the quest three 
years before. This was a matter of great impor- 
tance, for sledge traveling over the Polar Sea can- 
not be done before the end of February, for it is 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


3i8 

then still too dark, nor after the middle of April, 
for the lengthening of the days and the consequent 
warmth produces many leads, forming too much 
water for sledging. 

The first day’s travel for the main party, over 
the glacial fringe, resulted in two broken sledges. 
Both the Eskimo drivers were sent back to Cape 
Columbia for reserve sledges, but one did not re- 
turn. This reduced the strength of the expedition 
by one sledge and one man at the end of the first 
day. 

The second day spelled trouble. Bartlett and 
Borup had gone right ahead with their one day’s 
start, but a wind had sprung up during the night, 
which had opened the ice, forming a lead a quarter 
of a mile wide. All the divisions of the main 
party were halted, and iglooyas built. During the 
night the lead closed and at the break of daylight 
on the third day the sledges were crossing over 
the still moving ice in the lead. An hour’s travel 
brought the party to another lead. 

The Eskimo were sent out to scout for the trail 
made by Bartlett and Borup the day before, as the 
westward drifting of the ice on the other side 
of the lead had moved it out of sight. The trail 
made by the sledges of the pioneer party was 


THE NORTH POLE 


3 l 9 


finally found, but when the main party crossed this 
second lead and rejoined the trail, they found 
that Borup, who was expected to meet them, had 
passed them while the Eskimo were scouting, 
having crossed the lead at the point where his 
own back trail led. Seeing this, Peary sent Mar- 
vin and an Eskimo back to Camp Columbia to ad- 
vise Borup, and also to bring more fuel, as the 
fearfully rough going of the first three days had 
resulted in several of the alcohol and petroleum 
tins springing a leak. 

This same day, the third for the main party, 
the fourth for Bartlett and Borup, brought Borup 
no end of trouble. When he crossed the lead and 
found that he had missed Peary, he first spent a 
little time scouting for the trail, then decided to 
go to Camp Columbia, load up a standard load and 
follow for all he was worth. Borup was a Yale 
athlete and was keen to have a chance to do some- 
thing big. But when he struck the land he found 
that his due line landward from the end of the 
back trail led him fifteen miles west of Cape Co- 
lumbia owing to the drift of the ice and he had a 
hard time reaching the camp with the wind full in 
his face. He made it, however. 

The following day, the fifth for Borup, he woke 


320 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


to find a fearful wind blowing. It took him until 
nearly noon to get the four sledge loads from the 
cache. Then, suddenly, one of the houses at Camp 
Columbia took fire, the canvas lining of the inside 
being ablaze. Borup and his Eskimo put it out 
and nothing was seriously burned, but everything 
was soaked. With wet things it was impossible to 
start until the next day. The smoke was still 
rising when Marvin and his Eskimo appeared, 
having been sent back by Peary. 

On March 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th, Borup and 
Marvin were held up by a new lead that opened 
just at the pressure ridge a mile from the main 
camp. “ Nothing worse,’ ’ wrote Borup, “ could 
be devised by fiends than the gnawing agony of 
that long wait beside that black lead which 
wouldn’t close, and ever widening, would not let 
itself be frozen over. 

“We felt that unless the Commander had been 
held up by open water at the end of our fifth day, 
he was ninety miles out to sea ; that even if we did 
cross the lead, we did not know whether we could 
recover the trail. With the easterly drift of the' 
ice, we didn’t know but what the trail was some- 
where off Cape Colan, thirty miles away. 

“Now, it looked as though we wouldn’t get out 


THE NORTH POLE 


321 


to Peary again ; so, besides knowing that the suc- 
cess or failure of the expedition might depend on 
our catching the others, we also thoroughly corm 
prehended that, if we did not get out, we could 
never explain it, and at home there would always 
be the question of some one having lost his nerve.” 

On March 10th, the lead closed at last and 
Marvin and Borup got away. They met two 
sledges returning with two of the Eskimo who had 
broken down and the weakest of the dogs and with 
a letter from Peary saying that he had been held 
up by a lead himself for four days, four marches 
out, and that they were to hurry. These Eskimo 
were able to direct Marvin and Borup to the trail 
and this gained them time. 

Borup *s story of his rush after Peary in U A 
Tenderfoot with Peary,” which every American 
boy worth his salt ought to read— and own — tells 
in his own college fashion how they started. 

‘ * Then, ’ ’ he wrote, ‘ ‘ after the five days of wait, 
we got under way. On reaching the trail of the 
quitters, we headed north along it. Between the 
land and the sea was a long stretch of rubble ice 
and pressure ridges over which the going was 
frightful, with the pick in use every foot of the 
way. You had to fight for every yard-gain here 


322 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


as you’d do on the football field. Finally we 
struck the old trail on the far side, and on an old 
floe we passed Pa-nik-pah’s iglooya, where they 
had waited for the lead to close. 

“Every one was feeling just too fine for words 
at the idea of being at it again. The Commander, 
if he had crossed the lead on the 7th, couldn’t be 
more than seventy miles ahead. We had a fight- 
ing chance to catch him ! ’ ’ 

March 11th and 12th were fine days and Borup 
and Marvin made double marches, noon on the 
second day bringing them to five deserted igloo- 
yas near a lead half a mile wide, but recently 
frozen over. The following note was found : 

4th Camp., March 11, 1909. 

Have waited here (6) days. Can wait no longer. We are 
short of fuel. Push on with all possible speed to overtake us. 
Shall leave note at each camp. When near, rush light sledge 
and note of information ahead to overhaul us. 

Expect send back Dr. & Eskimos 3 to 5 marches from here. 
He should meet you and give you information. 

We go straight across this lead (E.S.E.) There has been 
no lateral motion of the ice during 7 days. Only open and 
shut. Do not camp here. CROSS THE LEAD. Feed full 
rations and speed your dogs. 

It is vital you overtake us and give us fuel. 

Leaving at 9. a. m. Thursday, March 11. 

Peary. 

P.S. On possibility you arrive too late to follow us, have 
asked captain to take general material from your bags. 


THE NORTH POLE 


323 


“How encouraged we felt when we read this!” 
wrote Borup. “He had left here thirty hours be- 
fore and was now a march and a half ahead.” 

They pushed on all day and when they camped 
at night, Marvin called for a volunteer to go 
ahead, flying with an empty sledge to tell Peary 
that the support sledges were right behind him. 
Let Borup, again, tell of the volunteer. 

“The man we least expected to,” he wrote, 
“spoke up at once, a man, who, on the previous 
expedition, had been a member of Clark ’s Starva- 
tion Party, who, blown to the Greenland Coast, 
destitute of supplies, were found in the nick of 
time by the Commander in what would have been 
their last camp, — See-gloo. On top of two forced 
marches, with less than four hours ’ sleep, he 
pushed on. Now, personally, I think that is one of 
the finest displays of nerve I have ever known. To 
go ahead with no grub on his sledge, in danger of 
being cut off by wind or open water, in spite of his 
terrible experience with Clark, means — Oh, 
that’s sand, and don’t you forget it! 

“A couple of hours later, the remnant of the 
North Polar Flying Squadron up-anchored and 
opened the throttle. March 11th was a forced 
march; March 12th another one, and no mistake. 


324 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


Our poor dogs were all in, hanging their tails and 
not pulling well. The inevitable result was that 
we were simply unable to double the march and 
could merely hold our own. 

“ March 14: Before sunrise we were on the 
road. It was catch the Commander or croak. A 
couple of hours later, we met the Doctor on his 
way to shore, with Wesh-ar-koop-si and Ar-co. 
He told us that the Commander was waiting for us 
at the camp a few hours on — that See-gloo had 
overhauled the party at dusk the night before. 
Then we shook hands and hit her up on the home 
stretch of our long race. 

“In the hitter air and the intense silence, we 
could hear the yelping of the dogs of the main 
party hours before we sighted the longed-for 
camp, perched high on a knoll of ice. How good it 
looked! A few hundred yards from camp I saw 
the Commander coming out to meet me. When 
we shook hands it was the proudest and happiest 
moment of my life. We ’d won out — a ninety mile, 
four-and-one-half day race to V-I-C-T-O-R-Y. ’ ’ 

Next day MacMillan was compelled to turn back, 
with a frozen heel, which was beginning to fester, 
and Borup, by means of sheer strength, saved the 
expedition another serious loss. Peary tells the 


THE NORTH POLE 


325 

story which, characteristically, Borup omits from 
his account. 

“Soon an active lead cut right across our path,” 
he wrote, “and on the farther or northern side 
of it we could see that the ice was moving. We 
got the dogs and sledges from one piece of ice to 
another — the whole forming a sort of pontoon 
bridge. 

“As Borup was getting his team across the 
open crack between two pieces of floating ice, the 
dogs slipped and went into the water. Leaping 
forward, the vigorous young athlete stopped the 
sledge from following the dogs, and catching hold 
of the traces that fastened the dogs to the sledge, 
he pulled them bodily out of the water. A man 
less quick and muscular than Borup might have 
lost the whole team as well as the sledge laden 
with five hundred pounds of supplies, which, con- 
sidering our position far out on that icy wilder- 
ness, were worth more to us than their weight in 
diamonds. Of course, had the sledge gone in, the 
weight of it would have carried the dogs to the 
bottom of the sea.” 

Henson pioneered for two days, giving only 
short marches, partly due to difficult conditions, 
then Marvin took up the w T ork for the next two 


326 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

days, making better time. At last the 20th came, 
on which Borup was to stop, having carried the 
Yale colors almost to eighty-five and a half de- 
grees. Thus Borup writes of his feelings as he 
turned back : 

4 ‘ March 20: This was my farthest north. I 
would have given my immortal soul to have gone 
on. I was in luck to get as far as I did. As a 
matter of fact, the Commander lugged some of us 
a good deal farther than necessary, knowing our 
feelings. I never felt so bad in my life as when I 
turned my footsteps landward, and I hope I never 
will, again. Still, it was part of the game. When 
the Captain of your eleven orders you to go to the 
side lines, there’s no use making a gallery* play 
by frenzied pleas to be allowed to go on. ’ ’ 

Full right has Yale to be proud of Borup ! 

This reduced the main expedition to four divi- 
sions, of three men each, headed respectively by 
Bartlett, Henson, Marvin and Peary, with eight 
Eskimo, ten sledges and the eighty best dogs. 
At this time Kood-shoo was transferred from the 
pioneer party to Marvin’s party. He had done 
thoroughly good work, but, lacking the experience 
of the older men, had expended unnecessary en- 
ergy and was thoroughly tired. 


THE NORTH POLE 


327 


Dauntless and indomitable courage on the part 
of all parties kept up the speed. One sledge was 
badly damaged but repaired for a light load. On 
the 24th the sledge driven by Eg-ing-wah, who 
was making a record as one of the best of all the 
Eskimo, was smashed. The loads now could be 
carried on eight sledges, so the two broken sledges 
were cut up for repairing these and putting them 
in first class condition. 

The next day put the expedition farther north 
than the Italian record and thirty-two days ahead 
of the Cagni record in point of time. The pres- 
ence of Marvin gave Cornell University a higher 
northing than had ever been made by man up to 
that time. In the afternoon Bartlett, with Oo- 
que-ah and Kar-ko, two sledges and eighteen dogs, 
burst away on the lead, eager to map out an ad- 
vance trail. 

Six Eskimo were now in the main camp. The 
fever of desire to push onward burned as hotly in 
Kood-shoo ’s veins as that of any of the white men, 
and he longed that he might be chosen to go on. 
Still, he remembered Ky-oah-pah’s vision, when 
the feet of his breath were out on the Great Ice, 
and he dared not let his hope reach too far. He 
remembered, too, the prophecy that his returning 


328 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

leader would never reach the ship, but he kept the 
remembrance to himself. 

“You have done well, very well, Kood-shoo,” 
Peary said to him in parting, 4 ‘but, naturally, it 
is the older men who are going on . 9 9 

The young fellow shook his leader’s hand in 
the white men’s fashion and walked away. Next 
morning, in company with Kood-look-too, he 
started back to Cape Columbia under the direction 
of Marvin. 

The last words of the explorer to the party 
were addressed directly to Marvin. 

“Be careful of the leads, my boy!” he said. 

Kood-shoo shivered. The memory of Ky-oah- 
pah’s dream would not be banished from his mind. 

On March 28th, some minutes beyond the 87th 
parallel, Peary caught up with Bartlett’s camp, 
made beside a wide lead stretching forbiddingly 
between them and success. Peary camped a hun- 
dred yards from Bartlett. It was at this point 
that occurred one of the gravest perils in the 
course of the journey. Peary, writing of the inci- 
dent, states that he was just on the point of drop- 
ping off to sleep when he heard some one yelling 
excitedly outside. 

“Leaping to my feet,” he writes, “and looking 


THE NORTH POLE 


329 


through the peep-hole of our iglooya, I was 
startled to see a broad lead of water between our 
two iglooyas and Bartlett’s, the nearest edge of 
water being close to our entrance; and on the op- 
posite side of the lead stood one of Bartlett’s men, 
yelling and gesticulating with all the abandon of a 
thoroughly frightened Eskimo. 

“Awakening my men, I kicked our snow door 
into fragments and was outside in a moment. 
The break in the ice had occurred within a foot of 
the fastening of my dog teams, the team escaping 
by just those few inches from being dragged into 
the water. Another team had just escaped being 
buried under a pressure ridge, the movement of 
the ice having providentially stopped after bury- 
ing the bight which held their traces to the ice. 

“Bartlett’s iglooya was moving east on the ice 
raft which had broken off, and beyond it, as far as 
the belching fog from the lead would let us see, 
there was nothing but black water. It looked as 
if the ice raft which carried Bartlett’s division 
would impinge against our side a little farther on, 
and I shouted to his men to break camp and hitch 
up their dogs in a hurry, in readiness to rush 
across to us should the opportunity present it- 
self.” 


3 3 ° 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


Peary’s position and that of Henson was almost 
equally dangerous. Their iglooyas were on a 
small piece of the floe, already cracking. At any 
second they might also be afloat. Gatling-gun 
orders were given to pack and hitch up, and Peary 
himself, with a pickaxe, chopped at a small pres- 
sure ridge that was in the way to make a road 
for the dogs. The teams were driven to the more 
solid floe in double-quick-time, and Peary and 
Henson were able to catch Bartlett’s floe and bring 
him and his teams to safety. New iglooyas were 
built, and, although the black fog kept all evidence 
of the lead’s further shore from sight, a murmur 
of surf, steadily increasing in volume, told the 
joyous story that the lead was closing. 

The following morning broke cold, closing the 
lead with thin ice, and therefore banishing the fog, 
which is due to evaporation in the intense cold. 
The three divisions rushed it in safety. Bartlett, 
with Kesh-ing-wah and Kar-ko, was sent ahead 
on a forced march, the four remaining Eskimo, 
who were being reserved for the dash to the Pole, 
being given lighter work. Their strength had 
been carefully saved all along, as soon as the 
earlier stages of the journey revealed which were 
the best fitted for the post of honor. 


THE NORTH POLE 


33i 


On March 31st, Captain Bartlett reached his 
highest north, carrying the Union Jack to a point 
higher than any flag except the Stars and Stripes. 
He almost touched the 88th parallel, but not quite. 

When Captain Bartlett, with two Eskimo, one 
sledge and eighteen dogs, had left for his return to 
the ship, the party for the dash to the pole con- 
sisted of six : Peary, Matt Henson, and the four 
Eskimo, Eg-ing-wah, Oo-tah, See-gloo, and Oo- 
que-ah. 

Henson, a negro and the explorer’s body-serv- 
ant, was selected by Peary to accompany him to 
the Pole for two reasons. Firstly, because he 
was the best man for the work, secondly, because 
he was less efficient than Captain Bartlett to take 
command by himself of the last supporting party 
homeward. He had been with Peary on his every 
farthest north for fifteen years, he was thoroughly 
experienced, a capable and handy man and almost 
as skilful a dog-driver as an Eskimo. Solely as 
an assistant, under the guidance of a white man, 
Henson reached the Pole, a fitting heritage for 
the Afro-American, who, in many times of 
struggle, has shown himself loyal to the country of 
his enforced adoption. 

Six days of marching lay ahead, with many diffi- 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


332 

culties and the fear of failure when so near to 
success, clutching at the throat! 

And then, on the thirty-eighth day out — ninety 
degrees North Latitude ! 

The Pole! 

The final story, the elevation of the Stars and 
Stripes at the summit of the world, the glory of 
final success — these should he read in Peary ’s 
words in Peary’s book. They are above quota- 
tion. Yet the official record is an ineradicable in- 
scription upon America ’s golden roll of triumphs 
and it cannot be set aside. It read as follows : 

90 N. Lat., North Pole 
April 6, 1909. 

I have to-day hoisted the national ensign of the United 
States of America at this place, which my observations indicate 
to be the North Polar axis of the earth, and have formally 
taken possession of the entire region, and adjacent, for and 
in the name of the United States of America. 

I leave this record and United States flag in possession. 

Robert E. Peary, 
United States Navy. 

Triumph indeed had come in the fullest degree, 
but the prophecy of Ky-oah-pah was to prove only 
too true. Nearing the Big Lead, on his return, 
Marvin had, as customary, after the night’s sleep, 
gone out ahead of the Eskimo to find and make 
the trail, leaving the others to break camp and 



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a 



Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History. 

The Sledge That Reached the South Pole. 

The difference in conditions of travel between that over the land mass of the Antarctic continent and over the frozen 
and hummocky ocean of the Arctic is shown in this lighter form of sledge used by Roald Amundsen The iournev 
is longer and bases of support are more difficult to establish, but the actual* going is not nearly as rou°h 3 



















































































THE NORTH POLE 


333 

follow. The recent ice of the Big Lead was safe 
and Marvin, hurrying on, did not notice its grad- 
ual thinning, until, suddenly, it collapsed under 
him. 

Kood-look-too, a long way behind Marvin, heard 
nothing and knew nothing of the tragedy until he 
reached the break in the thin ice of the lead. 
Marvin’s fur jacket was still visible when Kood- 
look-too came up, but rescue was impossible, since 
there was no way of reaching him, the ice being 
far too thin to hold a rescuer’s weight. By the 
time that Kood-shoo arrived, the body was not to 
be seen. It had, undoubtedly, been carried under 
the ice. Remembering Ky-oah-pah’s directions, 
Kood-shoo took the lead. To this Kood-look-too, 
remembering the young fellow’s friendship with 
the demons, was only too willing to agree, being 
glad to follow his comrade now that the white 
leader of the division was no more. 

“The bones of Ross G. Marvin,” wrote Peary, 
“lie farther north than those of any other human 
being. On the northern shore of Grant Island 
we erected a cairn of stones and upon its summit 
we placed a rude tablet inscribed : Tn Memory of 
Ross G. Marvin of Cornell University, Aged 34. 
Drowned April 10, 1909, forty-five miles north of 


334 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


C. Columbia, returning from 86°38' N. Lat.’ This 
cenotaph looks from that bleak shore northward 
toward the spot where Marvin met his death. His 
name heads that glorious roll-call of Arctic heroes 
among whom are Willoughby, Franklin, Sonntag, 
Hall, Lockwood and others who died in the field, 
and it must be some consolation to those who 
grieve for him that his name is inseparably con- 
nected with the winning of that last great trophy 
for which, through nearly four centuries, men of 
every civilized nation had suffered and struggled 
and died.” 



CHAPTER X 

KOOD-SHOO’S SECKET 

The Roosevelt lay off Cape Peary once more, 
and Commander Peary, soon to be made Admiral 
Peary, took his last look at grim black Kangah- 
snk, with the waves of the North Water foaming 
at his feet. It was the explorer’s farewell to 
Smith Sound, perhaps forever, for the great deed 
had been accomplished and the Pole was won. 

Rich beyond the dream of avarice, the Eskimo 
who had been on the fateful trip were set ashore 
at their various home villages along the coast, 
each with rifles and ammunition, steel hatchets 
and knives. Moreover, every man was given a 
telescope, a most valuable gift in that land where 
food depends on hunting alone, for with a tele- 
scope, distant game could be discerned which 
would escape ordinary sight. The Eskimo lose 
but a very small proportion of the animals which 
they once sight, for their patience and endurance 
in tracking are marvelous. As the telescope 
doubles their opportunities, by the one action it 
335 


336 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

also doubles their supply of food. Each of the 
four Eskimo who actually went to the Pole re- 
ceived a whale-boat as an additional reward, as 
well as many small articles of comfort, which made 
them Arctic millionaires. There was no doubt 
that Oo-que-ah would win his bride, the daughter 
of old Ik-wah of the village of Ipsueshaw. The 
girl was waiting at Etah, when the Roosevelt 
dropped her anchor. 

Alone among the natives Kood-shoo was regret- 
ful. He realized that in all probability Peary 
would never return again, and that while white 
men might come from time to time, they would be 
few. With the gateway to the north forced open 
and the Pole won, there would be no such lure to 
bring the white men, year after year, as there had 
been during the period of conquest. Stirrings of 
a different life from that of walrus and seal hunt- 
ing had been born in him, and his heart sank at 
the thought of a return to the level of Eskimo 
conditions, unlit by any higher touch. He had 
glimpsed a fuller and a richer life. 

“Where do you want us to put you ashore!” 
said Peary to Kood-shoo, shortly before the 
Roosevelt steamed away. 


KOOD-SHOO’S SECRET 


337 


“I don’t want to be put ashore,” the boy re- 
plied, “at least, not here.” 

“Where, then?” asked the explorer in surprise. 

“You will remember,” answered Kood-shoo, 
“that I told you how Ky-oah-pah, when the feet 
of his breath were out on the ice, said that I should 
find the heaven-born-stones?” 

“Yes, you told me so,” the explorer replied. 

“And you remember that he said that the head 
of the Woman would never be taken away?” 

“That came true, too,” Peary admitted. 

1 ‘ And you remember I told you he said that you 
would reach the middle ? ’ ’ 

“I recall your story of that dream very well. 
He was right,” the explorer agreed, wondering, 
as the boy spoke, at the correctness of the old 
angekok’s vision. 

“He told me, too, that I should go with you, but 
would have to turn back and that one white man 
in the party would be drowned.” 

“Poor Marvin,” sighed the other. “Unhap- 
pily, Kood-shoo, he was right there, also.” 

“And you remember that the black hunter of 
the Kig-ik-tag-miut said I should sell the Franklin 
magic to you and that the people of Itti-bloo would 


338 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

never again be in need of food. That has come 
true. ’ ’ 

“Well?” queried Peary. 

“Ky-oah-pah also told me,” said the boy, 
slowly, ‘ ‘ that I should travel to the Kig-ik-tag-miut 
and from there travel to the water on the other 
side of the sea of ice. There, he said, I should 
find the meaning of my second magic. ” 

“The Kig-ik-tag-miut is a Baffin Land tribe,” 
the explorer commented. “I can’t take you there, 
Kood-shoo, if that is what you want. I’m going 
to the United States as fast as I can go.” 

“Will you come anywhere near Baffin Land?” 
the boy asked. 

“Why?” 

“If the shore were not too far away, I could 
take a kayak, and reach it by myself.” 

Peary, although he was growing accustomed to 
the audacity of some of Kood-shoo ’s suggestions, 
looked at the boy in astonishment. Here was a 
young Eskimo knowing to the full the dangers of 
Arctic travel, who was willing and eager to be left 
on a strange shore, without dogs, sledges or food, 
with a kayak and his hunting equipment only. 

“You might starve as soon as you got ashore,” 
he said. 


KOOD-SHOO’S SECRET 


339 


Kood-shoo shook his head. 

4 ‘Where other Innuit live,” he answered, “I 
can live, and I can hunt better than the Kig-ik-tag- 
miut, for I have a gun and a telescope. My people 
say that I have the friendship of the demons. I 
have found that I have the friendship of the white 
men. You have taught me to have friendship in 
myself, so that I can never again be afraid. 
There is always some way to live. Let me ashore 
near the place where Kig-ik-tag-miut live.” 

There followed a long pause while Peary looked 
thoughtfully under his brows at this young Es- 
kimo, this lad who had learned so much and so 
well, and who seemed so different from his Smith 
Sound foster-fellows. 

“I’ll do better by you than that, Kood-shoo,” 
he said, at last. “I’m going to stop at Indian 
Harbor, Labrador. The Hudson Strait whalers 
often call at that port. They may not all have 
gone north, yet. I’ll give you a new sledge, twelve 
good dogs and full camp equipment, everything 
that you need, and I’ll leave word that will ensure 
your passage on the first whaler that touches at 
the port. Go back to the Kig-ik-tag-miut, if you 
want to, and teach them what you have learned 
from the white men.” 


340 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


Almost too grateful to speak, Kood-shoo 
thanked the explorer, who always knew how to do 
the right thing in his own stern way. So, when 
the Roosevelt steamed away from Kangahsuk, she 
carried the promised sledge, twelve of the finest 
dogs and a marvelous equipment. Since he was 
an expert in Peary’s methods of Arctic travel, 
there was little danger that Kood-shoo would come 
to grief, no matter in what part of the frozen 
north he should be landed. 

At Indian Harbor it chanced that there was a 
whaler in the port, and, seizing the opportunity, 
Kood-shoo was trans-shipped without even going 
ashore. He left the harbor in the whaler at al- 
most the same instant that a message was being 
flashed from the wireless station announcing that 
Peary had discovered the Pole. He never even 
heard of the inconsequential claims of Dr. Cook. 

In Gordon Bay, on the north shore of Hudson 
Strait, there was a whaler’s factory, whither the 
whales were towed and the blubber rendered down 
into oil. Here the vessel dropped Kood-shoo, the 
skipper taking great interest in the young Eskimo, 
with his halting English speech. It was a gift 
that Kood-shoo possessed, the gift of making 
friends. 


KOOD-SHOO’S SECRET 


34i 

The manager of the factory, an old-time Ameri- 
can whaler himself, could not do enough for Kood- 
shoo when he heard that the young fellow had been 
one of Peary’s supporting parties and had helped 
to plant the Stars and Stripes at the North Pole. 
With the old whaler’s aid and with generous sup- 
plies of food, Kood-shoo started north on a short 
trip to the summer villages of the Kig-ik-tag-miut. 

Owing to the exact directions he had received, 
he found little difficulty in reaching the first large 
village, where, to his delight, he found the leader 
of the tribe, Kunuksialuk, who remembered that 
one of their hunters had taken a boy from the tribe 
and had disappeared. But, so Kunuksialuk ’s 
story ran, this boy was not a member of the tribe, 
but had been brought from the north. Not know- 
ing who his questioner was, the leader of the Kig- 
ik-tag-miut declared that the boy was a child of 
the demons. So different was the language of this 
tribe from that of the Smith Sound Eskimo that 
Kood-shoo barely understood what was said, but 
he learned that this boy, who could be no other 
than himself, had been brought from the land of 
the Netchilirmiut, though where they might live, 
the old chief was quite unable to tell him. Kood- 
shoo sledged back to the whalers’ factory. 


342 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


“The Netchili?” said the old whaler, when 
Kood-shoo told him the story. “I don’t believe 
you’re a Netchili, for a minute, any more than 
you’re a demon. I hardly think you could have 
come from there ! They live away up north, near 
the Magnetic Pole. ’ ’ 

“I’ve just come from the Pole,” the boy an- 
swered, “there’s no one living there.” 

“I don’t mean the North Pole, I mean the Mag- 
netic Pole,” the other answered, and the old 
whaler spent a good part of the rest of the day 
trying to explain to Kood-shoo that the compass 
needle does not point to the Geographical North 
Pole at 90° N. Latitude, but to a point on Boothia 
Peninsula, considerably over a thousand miles 
from the Pole, on the mainland of Arctic Canada. 

It is at this point, not at the North Pole, that 
the compass needle, if swung free, will point 
vertically downwards. It is evident, then, that 
only at such points on the earth’s surface as 
Boothia Peninsula is in a direct line with the Geo- 
graphical North Pole will the needle point to the 
true north. This line is at 96° West Longitude 
passing near Omaha, Nebraska. The further 
east or west one Is from the line, the greater is 
the angle of difference between compass north and 


KOOD-SHOO’S SECRET 


343 


true north and likewise, the further north one goes, 
the wider is the angle. For this reason, sailors 
in steering a course at sea, always have to correct 
for compass error as well as for errors caused by 
the presence of iron in the ship, which is known as 
deviation. 

“I’ve been near the North Pole,” declared 
Kood-shoo, “but I couldn’t go right to the very 
place. But if my people live near the Magnetic 
Pole, then I will go to the very place.” 

“When do you propose to go?” the old whaler 
asked. 

“Now,” declared Kood-shoo. 

The grizzled veteran looked amusedly at the 
boy, utterly failing to connect this energy with 
what he knew of the Eskimo character. 

“What’s the idea?” he said. “Are you going 
to sledge the whole length of Baffin Land, or do 
you want to swim to Melville Peninsula?” 

“Sledge as far as I can and then cross the ice 
when it freezes,” Kood-shoo replied. 

The old whaler shook his head. 

“That’s a year’s trip for nothing,” he v said, 
“and there’s places on Baffin Land that are a good 
deal like the Greenland ice-cap. You wouldn’t 
find anything to keep you alive. If you’re really 


344 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


bent on going, my lad, I’ll put you across Fox 
Channel to Vanstittart Island. Then you can 
sledge, if you like, to Repulse Bay, because the 
little bit of water between Vanstittart Island and 
the mainland, running into Frozen Strait, is gen- 
erally solid. There’s a regular settlement at Re- 
pulse Bay, you know, and if the Eskimo aren’t 
there, when you arrive there’s no lack of grub.” 

“But how can you take me there?” queried the 
boy. “Is it so near?” 

“No,” the whaler answered, “it’s about three 
hundred miles off. But the water’s wide open 
now, and there’s daylight all the time. You’re a 
plucky lad, and if Peary thinks it’s worth his while 
to give you a hand, I’m not the man to hang back. 
We’ll pile into my steam launch here and that’ll 
burn up the miles pretty fast. I’ll just take a nap 
once in a while and let you steer and then we won’t 
need to stop on the way at all. It’s daylight all 
the while, now, and we ought to be able to make 
it in thirty hours. That’s if the engine doesn’t 
get stalled.” 

“And can you take the dogs, too?” asked Kood- 
shoo. 

“I can take the whole lot,” the skipper an- 
swered, “sledge, dogs and everything you’ve got.” 


KOOD-SHOO’S SECRET 


345 

He stepped to the door and looked up at the 
sky. 

“The weather looks all right,” he said, “sup- 
pose we do go now, before it blows up dirty f ” 

For answer, Kood-shoo turned sharp around 
and began to unload the sledge. 

The skipper whistled. 

“When you say ‘now/ you mean ‘now/ don’t 
you?” he remarked. “Well, I’m game. I don’t 
take any longer to get ready than any Eskimo I 
ever saw.” 

He lurched with a rolling gait to the boat-shed 
and threw open the door. In it was a small gaso- 
line launch, snug but powerful, occasionally used 
for towing the carcasses of the whales in to the 
factory slide. With Kood-shoo ’s help, the little 
craft was soon run on rollers out of the shed and 
on to the ice, whence it floated easily into the 
water. While Kood-shoo was packing his stuff 
into the boat, the old whaler tuned up the engine, 
and in less than two hours from the time that the 
trip had first been suggested, the chug-chug of the 
motor mingled with the screams of the seabirds 
and the trip around Cape King Charles and across 
Fox Channel was begun. 

The middle of the channel was filled with ice, 


346 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

but there was a wide stretch of water between the 
ice-foot and the pack, and the launch chug-chugged 
steadily along the coast. Once past Cape King 
Charles, the whaler took a more southerly course, 
running close to Southampton Island, a low lying 
land with flat limestone beaches, utterly unlike the 
Smith Sound coast line that Kood-shoo knew so 
well. As they passed they could see Eskimo on 
the beach making signs to them. 

‘ ‘ What tribe are they ? ’ ’ asked the boy. 

“Kinipetu, I reckon,” the whaler answered, 
glancing carelessly to the shore. “The Sagdir- 
limiut used to live there, but they’ve pretty well all 
died out. They were a poor lot. Why, they even 
got their drinking water by hanging a bag of snow 
down their backs under the furs and letting the 
heat of the body melt the snow. Captain Comer 
came here for the American Museum of Natural 
History some years ago and got a lot of bows and 
arrows, bone axes and stuff of that kind. It’s 
quite a favorite place for polar bears and the 
Eskimo generally wear nothing but bearskin. 
There’s plenty of fish, though, all the year round. 
The Kinipetu only visit here, now.” 

Cape Comfort passed, the skipper resigned the 





Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History. 

Polar Bear Mother and Cubs. 

Hardiest animals in the world, living summer and winter on the ice of the Polar North, where there is 

no cave or den of any kind to form a home. (Group mounted in the Museum). 





KOOD-SHOO’S SECRET 


347 


helm to Kood-shoo, telling him to steer for a point 
of land that could be seen faintly in the distance, 
and lay down for a sleep. Kood-shoo wakened 
him, as soon as the launch got near the land, the 
faithful little engine chug-chugging away without 
attention all the while that the captain slept. A 
few hours more brought them to Vanstittart 
Island. There Kood-shoo put up the tent that 
had been given him by Peary, and the two men 
slept soundly for twelve hours. When they awoke, 
the weather was still fine and the ice-pack had 
not changed. 

Kood-shoo thanked the whaler heartily, and, at 
his request, gave him for remembrance one of the 
carved ivory loop-buttons used for fastening 
sledge traces and which had been on the North 
Pole trip. Then, standing on the shore of Van- 
stittart Island, he watched the little launch puff 
back across Fox Channel until it was lost in the 
faint mist that hung around Southhampton Island. 
Kood-shoo was seven hundred miles away from 
his own Smith Sound people, with an unfamiliar 
land before him, a sledge and twelve dogs. He 
had left his kayak at Gordon Bay with the whaler 
who had proved so kind. It would be no use to 


348 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

him now, for while with a kayak he might cross 
rivers or leads of water, he would not be able to 
ferry a sledge and dogs across on it. 

The trip over Yanstittart Island was laborious, 
and, to any one less skilled in the handling of a 
sledge over rough conditions, would have been al- 
most impossible. High winds had swept the beach 
clear of snow and the ice-foot was narrow, broken 
and uneven. Yet the actual character of the jour- 
ney was very different from those of the spring, 
when sledging, under Peary, had meant forced 
marches to reach the distant Pole. Now, Kood- 
shoo had only himself and his dogs to feed, and 
there was no need for hurry, since he had plenty of 
time to reach the settlement at Repulse Bay. He 
traveled by short marches to keep the dogs in con- 
dition, and, though saving of ammunition, shot 
plenty of game. Brant geese were plentiful and 
there was an abundant supply of salmon in all 
the small streams that ran down from the inlet. 
Arctic hares were so tame and in such numbers 
that he killed them with a club. He saw tracks of 
caribou, but no animals. 

In four days of marching, guiding his sledge 
with the utmost care, for he had but one, Kood- 
shoo worked his way around the ice-foot of the 


KOOD-SHOO’S SECRET 


349 

island and struck across the ice of the little strait 
to the mainland. There, he found easier going, 
for the ice-foot was wide and a channel of water 
ran between it and the main ice-pack in Frozen 
Strait. The young fellow knew that he must go 
nearly to the end of the inlet before the ice would 
be solid enough to hold at this time of year, and 
then he must turn to the southward, for the whaler 
had given him exact instructions as to the location 
of the settlement. 

On the mainland, he broke his journey a couple 
of times to stalk and shoot three caribou and load 
the meat and skins on his sledge. After a couple 
of weeks’ travel the dogs were growing thin, but 
the lad had made small inroads on his store of 
pemmican and the settlement was not far away. 
He drove in, at last, less than one month from the 
time that he had bidden good-by to his friend the 
old whaler on the shores of Vanstittart Island. 

There were no Eskimo in the settlement at the 
time, but Kood-shoo could see that it was a place 
of sufficient permanence to ensure their return 
early in the fall. It seemed to the boy, moreover, 
that he was destined to follow on the tracks of the 
great Arctic Explorers of the past, for he found 
at Repulse Bay the place where Dr. John Rae had 


35o 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


wintered seventy years before, when he sought 
and successfully found the relics of the Franklin 
expedition. 

In the far north many men have laid down their 
lives, and Kood-shoo remembered how an ethnol- 
ogist who had accompanied Peary on one of the 
later expeditions had praised John Rae. He was 
the first explorer to understand the primary prin- 
ciple of true exploring, which is to live as the 
people of the region do, instead of trying to con- 
tinue the civilized system of living in a region 
which does not provide that character of sus- 
tenance. On this same Repulse Bay, Rae wintered 
in comfort and plenty, using nothing but the mate- 
rials provided by the region, within a decade of 
the time that Sir John Franklin’s men starved 
helplessly and died to the last man in a country 
rich in food and fuel. 

“That the country where Franklin’s men 
starved,” wrote Stefansson, “is sufficiently pro- 
vided with means of subsistence is shown by the 
fact that it was peopled by Eskimo both before and 
after that great tragedy. At the very time when 
these Englishmen were dying of hunger, there 
were living, all about them, Eskimo families who 
were taking care of their aged and bringing up 


KOOD-SHOO’S SECRET 


35i 


their children in comparative plenty, unaided by 
the rifles and other excellent implements which 
the Englishmen had in abundance.” 

Kood-shoo, with his thorough understanding of 
the Eskimo conditions of life and advantaged by 
his possession and use of the white men’s imple- 
ments, was assured of plenty wherever he went. 
The Eskimo sense taught him where to look for 
game, the white man’s telescope brought the most 
distant slopes near enough for search; Eskimo 
patience and Eskimo tracking brought him close 
to the desired game, the white man’s rifle en- 
sured success in killing it. The combination was 
invincible. In the three weeks that elapsed be- 
tween his arrival in Repulse Bay and the return 
of the Eskimo families to the settlement, Kood- 
shoo had already stored up almost enough meat 
for himself and for the dogs for the winter. He 
found the region between Repulse Bay and 
Chesterfield Inlet a rich country, richer by far 
than the Smith Sound ice-locked oasis that had 
been his life-long home. 

The tribe, which proved to be the Aivilirmiut 
Eskimo, had been visited by an ethnologist of the 
American Museum of Natural History, eight years 
earlier. They were then but one hundred and 


352 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


two in number, but with the help of the white men, 
who had given them iron for their harpoon points, 
the tribe had increased by a score or so. Long 
contact with the whalers had lowered their type 
below that of the Smith Sound people, though in 
material culture the^ were higher. 

Kood-shoo found their customs different in 
many ways. The kayaks, of which an example 
was taken to the museum, were lighter and lower 
than those used in Greenland and in almost every 
case the kayak was painted with black and red 
bands. The bows, he found, were made of musk- 
ox horns, and, besides, the natives used a dart, 
jerked from a throwing board, which they used 
when hunting seal from kayaks. In addition to 
the use of the fish-spear at holes in the ice, the 
Aivilirmiut used fishing hooks, sometimes with 
bait, more often with decoy fish made of bone. 
Much of the old life of the Aivilirmiut remained, 
despite the impact of the white men. Thus, at 
Nuvuk, not far from the main settlement, the 
young Eskimo noted several houses made of 
whalebone and turf. One of these was con- 
structed from the skull bones of five whales. 
This would no longer be possible, for, in Hudson 
Strait and Fox Channel, few whales are to be 


KOOD-SHOO’S SECRET 


353 

found now, the steam whalers having reduced the 
supply. 

Kood-shoo *s fur clothing, made of seal-skin and 
bear-skin, gave great astonishment to the Aivilir- 
miut, who make their summer and winter clothing 
alike from caribou skin. The cut and shape of the 
kapetah also was very different, those of the 
women, especially, having at the back a long tail 
reaching almost to the feet. The women also 
tattooed their faces and arms, and this surprised 
the boy, for the Smith Sound Eskimo did not 
tattoo at all. 

Richer than any one in the Repulse Bay village 
and by far the best hunter, Kood-shoo lived hap- 
pily there during the fall and winter, learning the 
Aivilirmiut speech and teaching his new friends 
how to make their life easier, by many little de- 
vices which he had learned from the white men. 
In turn, he learned many new things from them. 
The tribe wished him to settle there with them; 
but as soon as the sunshine-time came again, Kood- 
shoo was anxious to be off. Remembering 
Peary’s methods of travel, he engaged two mem- 
bers of the tribe with their sledges as supporting 
parties, and paid them in furs. He was thus able 
to travel in ease and comfort and pushed on in 


354 


THE POLAR HUNTERS 


a northwesterly direction over the Franklin 
Isthmus into Boothia Land. One of the two Es- 
kimo was the angekok of the village, a great 
teller of stories and regarded as the best caribou- 
hunter in the tribe. He had declared, from the 
first, that Kood-shoo was an angekok, and a very 
powerful one. 

Kood-shoo was amazed at the large herds of 
Barren Ground caribou he saw in the region, more 
animals being visible during one day’s travel than 
the entire herd of the caribou in the Smith Sound 
region. The caribou were larger, also, but more 
shy, requiring great patience in stalking. The 
angekok was exceedingly clever at this, and there 
was plenty of meat. The Aivilirmiut depend 
mainly on caribou, and many of their legends deal 
with this animal. One evening the angekok told 
Kood-shoo the story of the origin of the caribou. 

“A long time ago,” he said, “a spirit came to 
a village and married an Innuit woman. Since he 
was a spirit, he did not need any food and there- 
fore did not need to go hunting; but his wife grew 
hungrier and hungrier. Then all the people of the 
village came around and told him that he must go 
hunting and must provide for his wife. Finally 
the spirit grew angry, and taking his spear he 


KOOD-SHOO’S SECRET 


355 

struck the ground with it, and made a deep hole. 
Out jumped a caribou, which the man killed. Then 
he closed up the hole again and took the caribou 
home. It was very good eating, and the woman 
boasted of the prowess of her husband. At that 
time the Aivilirmiut lived solely on whale meat. 

‘‘The next time that the wife grew hungry and 
the spirit went out to get food for her, a man fol- 
lowed him secretly to learn what was this animal 
that the spirit had caught, the meat of which was 
so good to eat, and if there were any more like 
it. This man saw where the spirit struck the 
ground with his spear to let out the caribou and 
how he closed up the hole again. As soon as the 
spirit had gone back to the village, the man opened 
the hole, and the caribou jumped out. He did not 
know how to close it again quickly enough and all 
the caribou came out and spread over the earth. 
When the spirit saw all the caribou he was very 
angry. He kicked them in the forehead, so as to 
make their foreheads flat and told them to run 
away whenever they saw man. ’ ’ 

Many, many were the stories told by the ange- 
kok to Kood-shoo, and, in return, many were the 
Smith Sound stories told by Kood-shoo to the 
Aivilirmiut angekok. The traveling was good, 


356 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

very different from the ice-tortured channels of 
Kood-shoo’s home, and within two weeks from the 
time of his start from Repulse Bay, the boy found 
himself approaching the village of Nechili. This 
village, near to which Amundsen lived for two 
years, was called by the Norwegian explorer, an 
“ Eskimo paradise on earth / 9 There is fish in 
plenty, more than the tribe can ever catch, herds 
of caribou are on the isthmus all summer long, 
walrus and seal are plentiful. They have no 
enemies. Driftwood lies all along the shores, 
from the MacKenzie and Coppermine deltas. 
Living five hundred miles further south than the 
Smith Sound Eskimo, the Arctic night lasts only 
a few weeks. 

The Nechilirmiut tell many stories of their own 
fights with giants who once lived in their country, 
but Kood-shoo found them peaceful and friendly. 
Their speech was strange to him as that of the 
Aivilirmiut had been, but the large number of 
similar words enabled him to hold communication. 
He found a few relics of the Franklin expedition 
among them, as most of the explorers who have 
visited the tribe have found, and even more relics 
were the heritage of the Ogluli Eskimo, whose 
range, further to the west, includes the very sec- 



Courtesy of Seeley , Service & Co. 

Eskimo Boy at Play. 














































































KOOD-SHOO’S SECRET 


357 


tion from Point Victory to Todd Island covered 
by the last march of the ill-fated British expedi- 
tion. 

One of the old women of the tribe told him a va- 
riation of the story of the boy who was befriended 
by the demons, and the Nechili story was not 
greatly different from what he had been told by the 
angekok of the Aivilirmiut, but the old woman said 
that the black hunter had not stayed long in Ne- 
chili, he had been driven out by a tribe of Eskimo 
among which are men with blue eyes and brown 
curly hair. 

1 ‘ White men?” cried Kood-shoo, sure that at 
last he had found the survivors of the Franklin 
expedition. 

“No,” said the Nechilirmiut woman. “Innuit, 
but not like us. There are men there with blue 
eyes and curly hair,” she repeated. 

Kood-shoo was in a fever to be gone. In all 
his travels since he left Peary, nothing had come 
to bring him so much eagerness. He knew that 
the finding of survivors or children of the sur- 
vivors of the Franklin expedition would be a tri- 
umph second only to the conquest of the North 
Pole, and in vision he saw himself going to the 
white men’s land with the news of his wonderful 


358 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

discovery. He would go to the home of Peary- 
soak and tell him. 

He left next day. 

Summer was coming on, but still all the waters 
were frozen over, and Kood-shoo, under the guid- 
ance of an Ogluli Eskimo, started over the ice to 
King William Land, crossing in his line of march 
the path of the Franklin expedition. With that 
fate which kept him ever in the track of his first 
magic, Kood-shoo found himself at last on Todd 
Island, on the very site of the camp where 
the remnant of the Franklin survivors, famine- 
stricken and exhausted to the verge of death, liv- 
ing horribly on human flesh, had made their last 
camp. 

Victoria Strait was full of moving floes and the 
ice conditions were as dangerous as they had been 
for Franklin’s men. But Kood-shoo ’s life had 
been that of an Eskimo, he traveled with a Peary 
sledge, he still had six of the Whale Sound dogs 
left with which he had started from Repulse Bay, 
and two that he had bought in trade with the 
Nechilirmiut. Moving floes had no terrors for 
him. He crossed into Victoria Land in one day’s 
drive, into another land filled with caribou, an- 
other land of plenty. Past the old camp of Col- 


KOOD-SHOO’S SECRET 


359 


linson in 1854 he drove, and along the shore of 
Victoria Island to the section marked Wollaston 
Land on the charts. There, at last, the two 
sledges, that of the Ogluli in the lead and that of 
Kood-shoo following close behind, reached a vil- 
lage of four houses of the Haneragmiut, as the Og- 
luli called them. Three were of snow with skin 
roofs and one was made entirely of snow, built on 
the sea-ice about ten yards from the shore of Wol- 
laston Land. 

Kood-shoo stared at the people who came to 
meet him, stared with all his eyes. Here, at last, 
he thought, were qavdlunat, really white men. 
These could not be Eskimo, he was sure, and the 
young fellow’s thoughts followed closely the feel- 
ing of the famous discoverer of the “blond Es- 
kimo,” the explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson. 

“It is hard,” Stefansson wrote, “looking over 
a gap of years, to call to memory even the intense 
feelings with which we meet a crisis in life. That 
morning (May 16, 1910) when the nine men and 
boys of the village stood before me in line on the 
ice in front of their huts of snow and skins, 
I knew I was standing face to face with an impor- 
tant scientific discovery. . . . There are three men 
here whose beards are almost the color of mine 


360 the polar hunters 

and who look like typical Scandinavians, abundant 
three-inch long beards, a light brown in the outer 
parts but darker toward the middle of the chin. 
The faces and proportions of the body remind me 
of stocky, sunburned, but naturally fair Scandina- 
vians. The three bearded men are very much 
alike, though no two of them have the same 
mother, and all resemble closely an Icelander I 
know. One has hair that curls a trifle. One 
woman, of about twenty, has the delicate features 
one sees in some Scandinavian girls . . . and per- 
haps half the entire population have eyebrows 
ranging from a dark brown to a light brown or 
nearly white. ,, 

What is the origin of these men! It is another 
Arctic mystery. It is certain that they are not 
the survivors of the Franklin expedition, for there 
are old men in the village, fifty years old and 
more, who remember that their fathers and even 
their grandfathers were equally blond. Besides, 
as all the tribe had some signs of blond character, 
even the entire crew of Franklin’s men could not 
in one generation have so changed the physical 
appearance of the tribe. Further, there is no 
record in the tribe of the appearance of white men, 
whereas, in the three tribes which did come in 


KOOD-SHOO’S SECRET 361 

contact with the Franklin expedition, the tradition 
is live and detailed. 

Stefansson, the discoverer of the blond Eskimo, 
inclines to the idea that this is a half-breed rem- 
nant of the Scandinavian colonists of Greenland 
who maintained a permanent colony there from 
about the year 1000 to 1341. The Eskimo of Arc- 
tic Canada are notorious travelers. As a matter 
of fact, the Eskimo of Victoria Island, once every 
two or three years, travel as far east as Chester- 
field Inlet, south of Repulse Bay, leaving Wollas- 
ton Land in March and arriving at the trading 
point by August. Stefansson points out that there 
is no valid reason for supposing that a hybrid 
Scandinavian-Eskimo race from South Greenland 
might not, in seven hundred years, have migrated 
a distance which any of them to-day could sledge 
in a single year, especially as there is game all 
along the route, walrus and seal in the channels 
and herds of caribou in summer along the shore 
and on the islands. Many scientists prefer the 
theory that the 4 ‘Blond Eskimo” is merely a 
“sport” in nature, like the albino or less pig- 
mented groups. Wherever they might have come 
from, there they are, another of the unsolved 
puzzles of the frozen north. 


362 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

Sure that he had found his own people, Kood- 
shoo settled down in one of the Haneragmiut vil- 
lages, learning their tongue and affiliating himself 
with them. Yet, as the summer passed on, two 
things stood out clearly — that he did not feel him- 
self to he kin with them, and still more, that they 
did not feel themselves*to be kin with him. 

Autumn was drawing in, when a large party 
from the interior of Wollaston Land, whom Kood- 
shoo had not seen before, gathered toward the 
shore. The caribou were migrating southward 
for the winter and the winter hunting would neces- 
sarily be that of the sea-animals, like walrus and 
seal, who did not migrate to the mainland, like 
the deer. Among the party was the angekok of 
the tribe and Kood-shoo promptly got into com- 
munication with him. From the old man he heard 
the same story about the boy, but this time the 
tale alleged that the baby, who was thus handed on 
from tribe to tribe, was a child belonging to a 
tribe that now had almost died out. Indeed, the 
angekok said, there was only one man of the tribe 
remaining — an old man, lame in both feet, who 
lived on an island in Coronation Gulf. 

Evidently from the angekok ’s description, the 
place was not far away and Kood-shoo had already 


KOOD-SHOO’S SECRET 363 

come too far for a few extra miles to count. He 
begged tbe angekok to go with him as a guide, 
but the angekok refused flatly, and, moreover, ad- 
vised the rest of his tribe to keep away. 

i ‘ Tell me,” said Kood-shoo to the angekok, 
“why won’t you go?” 

“The demons have been angry with that 
people,” the old man answered, “and now they’re 
all gone away. That island is full of the breaths 
(souls) of the people who have gone away. Their 
breaths cannot cross the water without bodies, but 
if I should go there with you, their breaths might 
enter my body. Then the demons would come to 
my people and they would die, too.” 

“Was this baby one of these people?” 

“He was,” the angekok replied, “and that was 
why we would not let the black hunter stay. We 
were kind to the hunter and gave him food and 
dogs. I do not know where he went but I heard 
that he traveled to Nechili.” 

Kood-shoo knew where he had gone, but he said 
nothing. He only wondered at the strange jour- 
ney he must have made in early childhood. 

“You think I’ll have to go alone?” 

“None of the Haneragmiut will go, it is not 
wise,” the angekok replied. 


364 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

“Then I’ll go alone,” declared Kood-shoo, “Tm 
not afraid of demons, nor of the breaths of the 
people who are dead. Where is this island?” 

The angekok, only too eager to be rid of a visitor 
who thus bade defiance to the demons and who 
might likely draw down upon the tribe the venge- 
ance of the evil spirits, pointed to a small black 
speck in the waters of Dolphin Strait. 

“It is not far,” he said, “just where you see 
that rock . 9 ’ 

Kood-shoo scanned the intervening space. His 
trained eye told him that the ice was too much 
broken for sledging, and with his customary im- 
patience, he did not want to wait until the winter. 
Besides the thought of his people, reduced to one 
old man, lame and deserted by all the neighboring 
Innuit because it was believed that he was in 
league* with the demons, touched Kood-shoo very 
nearly. Well he knew that feeling of isolation, 
and he was young and strong. 

“Lend me a kayak,” he said. 

“No,” answered the angekok. “I will give you 
a kayak to go anywhere you wish, except there. 
Neither I, nor any hunter of the Haneragmiut will 
help you to go there.” 

Kood-shoo strode down to the beach and 


KOOD-SHOO’S SECRET 365 

selected from among the kayaks the one that he 
thought strongest and best. 

“That is mine,” said the angekok, who had fol- 
lowed him, “you cannot have it.” 

Kood-shoo smiled and picked it up ready for 
launching. The angekok laid a hand on his shoul- 
der. The young fellow knew well that other mem- 
bers of the tribe were watching and that any 
weakness on his part would mean that everything 
he owned would be taken by the Haneragmiut. 
Raising his rifle to his shoulder he aimed at a pass- 
ing sea-gull and fired. The bird dropped like a 
stone. Then Kood-shoo stepped hack a pace or 
two and pointed his rifle at the angekok. 

“Na-mik! na-mik!” (No! No!) exclaimed the 
old man, thoroughly frightened. 

“Tell the Haneragmiut,” said the boy, “that 
on my sledge there are guns like this, that I have 
taught to fire of themselves if any hunter touches 
my belongings. I am going to the island and will 
be back in two sleeps. Let nothing he touched.” 

Without waiting for a reply, Kood-shoo stepped 
into the kayak and launched it in the water, taking 
with him only his rifle and his fish-spear. The 
current in Dolphin Strait was far swifter than he 
had expected, but he was half way to the island 


366 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

when suddenly a walrus rose from underneath, 
staving in the boat. It began to sink and Kood- 
shoo had barely time to paddle to a floating cake 
of ice before he felt the kayak founder under him. 
Grabbing his rifle and fish-spear he leaped on the 
ice. 

The angekok, watching from the shore, saw the 
kayak sink and the stranger safe. 

Then, round a hummock of the floe, came a great 
Polar Bear. 

Kood-shoo raised his rifle to his shoulder and 
covered the nannook-soak. And, as he did so, the 
vision of Ky-oah-pah returned to him. He re- 
membered that the old angekok, many years be- 
fore, had foretold this very occurrence and had 
warned him that he should not kill the bear. He 
dropped his rifle and, foolish though the action 
seemed, struck the huge beast across the nose with 
the ivory handle of his fishing-spear. The bear 
growled, retreated and, as the boy advanced, slid 
backwards off the floe into the water. 

Advancing boldly, Kood-shoo found on the ice, 
the bear’s prey, the freshly killed body of a seal. 
Marveling at this, the young fellow turned to see 
where he was drifting and saw that the current 
led him on, directly for the island. Indeed, in a 


KOOD-SHOO’S SECRET 367 

few moments he would reach another floe, which, 
with care he could use as a ferry and gradually 
approach the ice-foot. But the seal? 

Remembering Ky-oah-pah’s vision, Kood-shoo 
hesitated no longer, but picked up the seal and 
threw it over his shoulder, as once he had seen 
Borup do. The passage was perilous, but Kood- 
shoo was young, strong and full of the high excite- 
ment that accompanies the doing of a long-sought 
deed. Slipping, leaping, climbing and scrambling, 
he came at last to the island. 

“You will find upon the beach,’ ’ he remembered 
the words of the vision, “an old man making 
black marks on the shoulder blade of a walrus.” 

Was this to prove true, too? 

With steps that hurried and an excited glint in 
his eyes, Kood-shoo raced along the beach, eagerly 
anticipating what he should see when he turned 
the corner of the cape a few hundred yards ahead 
of him. Now the cape was almost passed, and 
now — 

Before him, on the beach, sat an old man, mak- 
ing black marks on the weather- whitened shoulder 
blade bone of a walrus. 

The islander looked up as Kood-shoo came near, 
but did not speak. The lad remained silent, also. 


368 THE POLAR HUNTERS 

He came up to the piece of bone and looked down. 
And there he read, in English words, 

“In memory of — ” 

Kood-shoo started. 

“I’ve seen those words before/ ’ he said, also 
in English, “when we made a cairn for Marvin.’ ’ 

Two sunken eyes, glazed from hunger, looked 
from cavernous sockets at the young fur-clad 
figure with the dead seal over his shoulder. 

“Who are you?” said the islander, in a hollow 
voice. “You who speak English? IVe been 
marooned on this island for twenty years, ever 
since my ship, a good American whaling craft, 
went down with all hands but me and my boy. 
Who are you?” 

Tremblingly, Kood-shoo took the second magic 
from the caribou skin pouch around his neck and 
placed it in the old man’s hand. 

“Ay,” said the man, “that’s mine. Where ’d 
you get it?” 

Like a flood there surged over Kood-shoo ’s 
mind all the differences that had set him apart 
from the Eskimo, his ambition, his energy, the 
quickness with which he had learned white men’s 
ways and the white man’s speech, and he flushed 
hotly. 


KOOD-SHOO’S SECRET 369 

“I think/ ’ he said, “I think yon must have 
given it to me yourself — ” 

“Ay — if it’s not a dream,” was the feeble an- 
swer. 

“It’s not a dream, it can’t be! I’m not an Es- 
kimo ! Oh ! Say I ’m not an Eskimo ! ’ ’ 

The old man tottered to his stumps of feet, even 
in his wrecked old age, towering above Kood-shoo, 
and held the lad close, blinking as he tried to see. 

“You’re John,” he shouted, “an American boy, 
and my son!” 

He almost fell. Kood-shoo supported him and 
laid him down on the beach, reaching out for the 
seal-meat as he did so. 

The old man’s gaze fell on the inscription he 
had begun to write on the walrus bone. 

“I’ll not need that now,” he said. 

“Father!” cried Kood-shoo, and knelt happily 
on the beach beside him. 


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